Railroad apartment
A railroad apartment is an apartment with a series of rooms connecting to each other in a line.[1] A hallway typically runs the length of the apartment or flat from the front door to the back door, outside each room.[2] This is similar in design to a railway car. This usage is most common in New York City, San Francisco and their surrounding areas. Railroad apartments are common in brownstone apartment buildings.
Sometimes confused with a shotgun house, which is just a series of rooms connected directly, with no hallway, railroad apartments do typically have hallways.[2] However, rooms may also connect directly, such as with panel doors that connect the living room to the dining room.[2]
Railroad apartments first made an appearance in New York City in the mid-19th century, and were designed to provide a solution to urban overcrowding.[3] Many early railroad apartments were extremely narrow (some only 20 feet wide), and most buildings were five or six stories high.[3] Few early buildings had internal sanitation, and bathrooms emptied raw sewage into the back yard.[3] In some cases, one family would take up residence in each room, with the hallway providing communal space.[2]
See also
- Shotgun house
- Enfilade (architecture) – similar design in grand European architecture of the Baroque period
- List of house types
References
- ^ Cassidy, Frances Gomes. Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. ISBN 0674008847
- ^ a b c d Sennett, Richard. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992. ISBN 0393308782
- ^ a b c Eisner, Simon; Gallion, Arthur; and Eisner, Stanley. The Urban Pattern. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1993. ISBN 0471284289
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