THE
quired for all buildings in more congested areas, and in other outlying districts the requirements, while are no easier for one type of apartment than for another. And, at any rate, the best policy of finance and management, such as City and Suburban Homes Company and the Queensboro Corporation practise, de- mands only the soundest and most sub- stantial building construction, otherwise a heavy loss occurs through depreciation. Also in the matter of mechanical fea- tures, such as plumbing, heating, wiring, etc., the same considerations dictate the highest standards. The Queensboro Cor- poration, which provides housing for the middle class, furnishes bathrooms of the same grade as those in luxurious apart- ments. In regard to interior finish, all three classes of New York apartments are much alike, since even in the highest priced apartments it is the custom to furnish the tenant with the plainest in- teriors and to allow him to install at his own expense whatever decorations he wishes.
Wherein, then, does the difference in relative cost of construction of the three classes of apartments lie? Principally in the sizes of rooms, decoration of en- trances, vestibules, lobbies, corridors, etc., and in cost of materials of architectural design that may be used on the exteriors. The cheaper apartment houses may even be more expensiv e in one respect: suites in them occupy the least possible space, and kitchens and bathrooms occur more frequently in the plans. All these differ- ences and resemblances are important, because they show that the business of providing proper housing at reasonable rentals in a large city is an extraordinarily difficult one. In some respects, at least, the standard is the same for the apart- ments of the mechanic as of the million- aire, and, as mentioned above, it should always be remembered that at the root of the whole complex situation are the wage scales, the standards of living, and the cost of living—the economics of the na- tional life.
The foregoing paragraphs furnish some idea of the chief types of garden apartments. One more general fact
less severe,
ARCHITECTURAL
122
RECORD.
considered: this garden = apart-
New York quest ion, who
them may _ be far is the original to City? Replying to such a one may say that the several men have developed this great conception have gone elsewhere to borrow elements and conceptions for their schemes; that they have independently invented other fea- tures that at the time they did not know had already been invented elsewhere, and that—here is the true conception of originality—they combined these various elements into a whole, consistent, almost new conception such as cannot be found perfected elsewhere to quite the same degree—to the same degree in Ameri- can city housing at least. As to Europe, conditions are so different there, and Americans are so busy that they do not attempt to keep track of everything that so that the New York men prominent in this work are chary of expressing any opinion. Stated more specifically, the idea of apartments with much open land around them is not new. The heads of the Queensboro Corpora-
about is how ment idea
1 happens abroad,
tion say that they were impressed with this fact, when, on a visit to Germany in 1914, they saw the new housing in
with ample recreation built in the newer suburbs like Charlottenburg. The same is true of details of design. The idea of the court, of course, is as old as architecture. The “open stair” in apartments is a London device, and was found repro- duced in a few cases in Brooklyn years ago. Mr. Thomas has developed the idea of using loggias, though this practice is many years old in Chicago. Planning apartments two rooms deep had long been a characteristic of apartments for the rich, though Mr. Thomas was one of the first to employ it in wage-earner’s housing. Even that arrangement of plan, of having separate entrances for apart- ments and eliminating both public and private corridors—which Mr. Thomas has so well worked out in apartments— is old in college dormitories, going back even to the cloisters of Oxford, though naturally on account of the greater num- ber of rooms and the kitchens, it is a
apartments, Space
around them,
