Twentieth-century New York is now famous as the city of "cliff dwellers," but in the second half of the nineteenth century, middle-class apartments in Manhattan were a new--and somewhat suspect--architectural form. Alone Together presents a history of the "invention" of New York apartment houses.
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
This informative, scholarly study traces the evolution of the New York apartment building as a specific building type from its somewhat disreputable roots in Europe in the mid-19th century to its overwhelming acceptance by the general populace just 50 years later. Cromley has done a superb job of describing the initial resistance to collective living, how architects attempted to solve the problem of domestic privacy, and how apartment living revolutionized traditional housekeeping activities. Particularly fascinating are her insights into how families adapted to this new form of housing and how the apartment building of today evolved. This well-illustrated volume should be of interest to social and architectural historians alike.
- H. Ward Jandl, National Park Service, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- H. Ward Jandl, National Park Service, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The development of the early New York apartment house,
By saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments (Paperback)
This superb book explains how well-to-do New Yorkers were reluctant to move into apartment buildings, and how that resistance was overcome through clever design and marketing tactics. Cromley begins by discussing early Parisian apartment buildings and the earliest tenements in New York City. These two historic strands came together in the 1870s, when apartment buildings for the affluent, known as 'French flats,' appeared as a new building type for New York. Cromley highlights the social history of the era - what life was really like for the people (especially the women) who lived there, as distinct from their counterparts in single-family houses. Among the still-extant classic buildings discussed are the Dakota (1884), the Osborne (1885), and the Ansonia (1902). In all, the book covers the mid-1800s to 1911; there is nothing here about the 1920s building boom following WWI. The book is generously illustrated with about 30 floor plans and about 50 engravings.
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