Full Article @ NY MAG
Quote:
New York didn’t invent the apartment. Shopkeepers in ancient Rome lived above the store, Chinese clans crowded into multistory circular tulou, and sixteenth-century Yemenites lived in the mud-brick skyscrapers of Shibam. But New York re-invented the apartment many times over, developing the airborne slice of real estate into a symbol of exquisite urbanity. Sure, we still have our brownstones and our townhouses, but in the popular imagination today’s New Yorker occupies a glassed-in aerie, a shared walk-up, a rambling prewar with walls thickened by layers of paint, or a pristine white loft.
The story of the New York apartment is a tale of need alchemized into virtue. Over and over, the desire for better, cheaper housing has become an instrument of urban destiny. When we were running out of land, developers built up. When we couldn’t climb any more stairs, inventors refined the elevator. When we needed much more room, planners raised herds of towers. And when tall buildings obscured our views, engineers took us higher still.
This architectural evolution has roughly tracked the city’s financial fortunes and economic priorities. The turn-of-the-century Park Avenue duplex represented the apotheosis of the plutocrat; massive postwar projects like Stuyvesant Town embodied the national mid-century drive to consolidate the middle class; and the thin-air penthouses of Trump World Tower capture the millennial resurgence of buccaneering capitalism. You can almost chart income inequality over the years by measuring the height of New York’s ceilings.
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The story of the New York apartment is a tale of need alchemized into virtue. Over and over, the desire for better, cheaper housing has become an instrument of urban destiny. When we were running out of land, developers built up. When we couldn’t climb any more stairs, inventors refined the elevator. When we needed much more room, planners raised herds of towers. And when tall buildings obscured our views, engineers took us higher still.
This architectural evolution has roughly tracked the city’s financial fortunes and economic priorities. The turn-of-the-century Park Avenue duplex represented the apotheosis of the plutocrat; massive postwar projects like Stuyvesant Town embodied the national mid-century drive to consolidate the middle class; and the thin-air penthouses of Trump World Tower capture the millennial resurgence of buccaneering capitalism. You can almost chart income inequality over the years by measuring the height of New York’s ceilings.
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