Alone Together
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Book Overview
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.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0801486130
ISBN13:9780801486135
Release Date:December 1998
Publisher:Cornell University Press
Length:272 Pages
Weight:1.32 lbs.
Dimensions:0.8" x 7.0" x 10.0"
Age Range:18 years and up
Grade Range:Postsecondary and higher
Customer Reviews
1 rating
The development of the early New York apartment house
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
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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