QAHS: Apartment House Development on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill Prior to World War II

Apartment amenities and configurations also developed to meet residents' needs. "Flats," containing several reception rooms on one floor, were particularly popular because of their suitability for entertaining. Word of these innovations crossed the Atlantic, and the Beaux Arts style and the elegance of these buildings profoundly influenced the development of New York City through the 1920s.

London: A Tradition of Privacy

London developed differently, and was more generally more influential on the United States than was Paris. The city grew as a series of villages outside of its defensive walls. Although it was one of the world's most populous cities, it did not have the high densities seen on the continent. Rowhouses were the primary dwelling type, with numerous single family homes, both rowhouses and freestanding, built within a short distance of the city center.

The English strongly valued privacy, feeling that proper family life was possible only in a single family home, not in a flat where one's private life could be exposed to others in stairs and hallways. To counteract this attitude, early apartments for the middle and upper-middle classes emphasized privacy, eliminating open passages and stairways; they often had two stories to separate the bedrooms from the entertaining rooms. These same concerns were encountered in marketing apartments to Americans.

English "flats" were initially built for artisans, often by charitable trusts. However, even in these uses, acceptance was slow. Local government authorities were authorized in 1851 to build housing, and were specifically encouraged to do so in the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890; however, they built primarily cottages, as were found in country towns.^{^[26]}

First class apartment buildings or "mansion flats" began to appear in the 1850s, when Victoria Street was created to make a new upper-middle class neighborhood from cleared slums. These buildings provided the amenities of townhouses for those who could not afford them, with large rooms, a service staff and mews for carriages, horses and servants. As in Paris, residents learned that entertaining could be considerably easier in a spacious flat than in the traditional London townhouse with two rooms per floor. Flats also made it much easier to have such conveniences as running water, gas lighting and central heating.^{^[27]}

Shortly after the turn of the century, a German architect, Hermann Methusius, noted that England was the only advanced country in which the majority of the population still lived in houses rather than multifamily dwellings. Among other things, he saw this as reflecting their inability to subordinate themselves to the community as a whole, a too-highly developed independence of the individual. The Englishman sees the whole of life embodied in his house. He reported that London's first blocks of leasehold flats had just recently been built,

But this trend is not of any great consequence; on the whole it appears to be a temporary phenomenon or a product of special circumstances. Should the custom become more widespread, however--which at the moment seems unlikely--this could only be a sign of economic recession and, even worse, would spell the demise of one of the best aspects of the English heritage. For there can be no doubt that to live in a private house is in every way a higher form of life.... For one cannot expect the present-day urban flat to replace the moral and ethical values that are inherent in the private house. Accommodation from which we can be given notice at the next quarter-day is hardly likely to seriously engage our domestic interest. We accept it with the same indifference that we show towards an hotel room..... Flat-dwelling can only be regarded as an emergency substitute for living in a private house.... The most valuable gain from living in a private house is this closer contact with nature and the greater bodily and spiritual health which it brings. Even the house in the city... has some connection with the ground at least and it is easier to breathe fresh air.^{^[28]}

Despite these opinions, as density and costs increased, flats became popular among certain groups of people, with the construction of buildings in fashionable areas such as Albert Hall Mansions (1879) and Whitehall Court (1884) on the Thames. Numerous blocks of flats in the Georgian Revival and brick Queen Anne styles appeared in several parts of London before World War II. However, the tradition of single family housing and privacy remained strong, and the rowhouse is still the basic residential structure in most of London.

APARTMENT HOUSE TRADITIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

As in England, the single family house has been dominant in American life and Americans have always been ambivalent about multifamily living. Much the same objections were heard as in England. When apartments were first built in New York City, William Dean Howells said of the flat: "It's made for social show not for family life. Think of a baby in a flat! The flat is the negation of motherhood; it's a contradiction in terms. The flat means society life. It's made to give artificial people a society basis on a little money."^{^[29]}

In his 1929 work, R.W. Sexton describes the state of apartment houses, hotels and the hybrid, apartment hotels, saying that "...none of these buildings should be rightfully classed as a home....they all lack the very fundamentals on which the home is founded...the most important is perhaps privacy. Another is individuality."^{^[30]} He goes on to admit that multi-dwelling houses offer a new type of home, characterized chiefly by convenience. He sees it as the architect's task to temper the owner/developer's search for convenience and profit with art and design. Regardless of these beliefs, more and more people in many parts of the country were turning toward apartment living for a variety of reasons.

Two factors reduced resistance to apartments: increases in central city land prices as population and demand grew, and technological advances that made apartment houses more appealing. Both within cities and in the newly-developing suburbs, corridors of apartment buildings and nodes of shops blossomed near transit points. The forms common in Seattle were found throughout the country, brick buildings in a block shape, or in a U-shape with an entrance courtyard.^{^[31]}

New York Elegance

Despite strong initial resistance, upper- and middle-class apartment living became popular in New York City during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, directly reflecting European influences. Large multifamily dwellings were first built to house workers moving to New York to work in the factories of the Industrial Revolution. At that time, any "house or part of a house occupied or arranged to be occupied by three or more families living independently of each other and doing their own cooking on the premises" was defined as a tenement.^{^[32]} They were designed for worker housing and, accordingly, were shunned by the middle and upper classes.

However, as property values increased, the cost of the preferred living quarters, large townhouses, and of the servants to maintain them, grew beyond the means of even upper middle class couples. The obvious solution would have been to divide the larger buildings, as was done elsewhere. However, the concept of living with another family above or below was unacceptable. One popular solution for many was moving to the suburbs where housing prices were cheaper.^{^[33]} The alternative of apartment living was slow to begin, but was then accepted quickly because of its advantages in cost and convenience.

The architect Calvert Vaux proposed in 1857 that French-style housing be built to relieve the housing shortage, but it was more than ten years before the first was built, by Richard Morris Hunt. Local papers warned: "this business of renting suites of rooms will never become popular in New York, until it is first rendered fashionable by well-to-do people." They recommended, instead, investing in transit to encourage people to commute from the suburbs.^{^[34]} However, fashionable people quickly filled the first building, the Stuyvesant apartments, calling it "at once, rich and modest." Only six months later, a second building went up, advertised as being "designed for strictly independent housekeeping, in good but not extravagant style."^{^[35]} The combination of social appeal and relatively moderate cost proved to be very popular.

These first buildings were highly profitable for the owners, and over the next two decades developers flocked to the apartment concept. This developers' competition increased land values further. The apartment rapidly became the normal middle and upper class residence in Manhattan. Metal frame construction, fire proofing, and the elevator allowed greater building heights, away from the noise and dirt of the street. Other technological improvements such as electric lighting, improved plumbing and central heating increased the appeal of apartments, since they were easier to afford there than to build into a detached house.

Competition among builders also led to increasingly elaborate structures, and even those for the middle class often had to offer extensive amenities to be successful. Elegant architecture and decor, luxurious lobbies, as well as convenience, all attracted tenants. Many apartment buildings copied the Viennese pattern of a palace-like structure with a large lobby and interior court, giving a sense of grandeur to families who would not be able to afford a private house of such elegance.^{^[36]}

Apartment sizes and floorplans reflected changing living patterns and fashions. Early buildings, for instance, included several bedrooms and multiple servants' rooms to accommodate large families. In the most advanced buildings, the areas for entertaining, sleeping and service were kept separate, to maintain formality just as in a single family home. Later units were much smaller, reflecting smaller family size, the number of people living alone and the increased informality of life.

By 1885 a variety of living options were available, including studio residences for artists, bachelor flats, apartment hotels, housekeeping apartments and cooperatives. A number of these choices were eventualy found in Seattle as well.

Bachelor flats were small one bedroom units, with room for a servant and perhaps a small kitchen, allowing someone without a family to live comfortably and entertain small groups of friends. A few of these were sometimes included in buildings of larger units for families. Some were specifically designed for women, providing safe and convenient quarters for single women in the city.

Another option was the apartment hotel, often with no private kitchens but with a restaurant on the first floor. These were considered ideal for newcomers getting established in the city and busy professionals and entertainers who did not have the time for a household or the need for a long lease. In 1910, 15,000 couples in New York City lived in apartment hotels.^{^[37]} Some apartment hotels catered to families, who generally avoided the transient hotels. One reason for the proliferation of this building type in New York was that the law limited the height of apartment buildings, but not that of hotels or apartment hotels. However, high labor costs soon led to decreasing service and the lines between the two types blurred; most buildings eventually added individual kitchens and the restaurants became public.

An alternative form of building ownership, cooperatives, also developed at this time. Occupants bought shares of the building, so that they had a greater stake and sense of ownership than simply being tenants. Originally part of a Utopian philosophical movement, this fashion died out for a time. The famed Chelsea Hotel opened in 1895 as a cooperative but became an apartment hotel in 1905.^{^[38]} Cooperatives later became quite common in New York, but they are rare in Seattle. In the study area, the Victoria was originally intended to be a cooperative, but was never sold as such. The Amalfi became a cooperative in 1950.

By the 1880s New Yorkers saw the construction of numerous 10-to 12-story buildings as large as an entire city block, especially around Central Park. While luxury buildings such as the Dakota have been the most publicized, many middle-class apartments were built as well, with four to five rooms, as compared to the six to ten rooms found in more upscale units. In the first decade of the 20th century, 4,000 new apartment buildings were constructed in Manhattan. In the 1920s New York experienced a post-war building boom, with 77 percent of all residential construction in the city being apartment houses; in 1927 only five single family homes were built in Manhattan. Apartment size decreased, from 4.19 rooms per unit in 1918 to 3.37 in 1928. The number of units with three or fewer rooms doubled.^{^[39]} Much of the loss of space was made up in increasingly sumptuous appointments and conveniences. Efficient space use was stressed, leading to the foldaway bed and table. Smaller apartments increased the developer's income, since they rented for higher rates per square foot; this, in turn, led to more apartment construction.

By this time New York apartment houses for the upper class had reached a culmination in luxury, design and size. Many rose to 20 stories, with apartments as large as twenty or more rooms. Maids' rooms, pantries, fireplaces, terraces and elaborate detailing were common. Some buildings accommodated children with playrooms and outdoor play areas. The high-rise apartment, looking down on the city, set a new image of glamor, until the Crash of 1929 ended development until after the war.^{^[40]}

Although few West Coast buildings reached the luxurious heights found in New York, the pattern of intensive apartment development during the 1920s was repeated along the West Coast. The interest in apartments spread for varying reasons and these cities adapted the structures to suit their own needs.

San Francisco: Western Elegance

The West Coast was distinctly different from the East. San Francisco developed as the most dense city in the West, with rapid early development, constrained physical boundaries and small lots. The earliest multifamily accommodations, from the time of the Gold Rush, were boarding houses and family hotels. These allowed single people or couples, with or without families, to live conveniently without having to buy a house or maintain a large household. Facilities were available for all classes, with appropriate appointments and services. Residents ate at restaurants either in the same building or nearby. Over time, many of these units came to have their own kitchens, becoming de facto apartments and implying a greater sense of permanence.

The first apartment houses were subdivisions or expansions of the city's typical Victorian house form, a narrow building of two or three stories and two window bays. The tall narrow houses proved to be easy to subdivide into flats, housing one family per floor. Often, they were subdivided further.^{^[41]} As apartment living became more popular, larger purpose-built structures were constructed, up to 5 to 8 stories in height.

By 1916 apartments and flats were such a prominent feature of the city that they were used as a selling point for new single family houses, always the Bay Area ideal. The November 1916 issue of Bungalow magazine featured an article titled "Modest Bungalow Means Passing of the Apartment House in San Francisco." The author attributed the high vacancy rate in San Francisco apartment buildings to people fleeing the city to new bungalows in the East Bay and the Peninsula. The article also touted the construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel, opening up new land within the city for bungalows with their promise of privacy, light, air, and garden space--implying that apartments lacked these amenities.^{^[42]}

Pre-war San Francisco developed the strongest high-density apartment tradition on the West Coast. Structures on Nob Hill and Russian Hill rivaled the size and luxury found in New York. Even these large buildings often evoked the basic forms of the original Victorian structures, with bay windows and delicate ornamentation. However, apartments were typically smaller and less luxurious than those in New York, and more enclosed than those in Los Angeles, with less emphasis on courtyards and outdoor living.

Los Angeles: New Building Forms

Southern California developed its own answer to the search for privacy, light, air, and garden space, while accommodating increasing numbers of people. The area's rapid growth in the early years of the twentieth century--quadrupling in size between 1910 and 1930--meant that there was a need for new housing forms, especially for single people, childless couples and lower-paid workers. In response, groups of small inexpensive cottages, or bungalow courts, were built. Builders gradually merged them into attached structures around courtyards. Apartments quickly grew to be one of the area's major housing types; by 1928, 53 percent of residential construction was apartments.^{^[43]}

The bungalow court was not universally popular. The architect Charles Sumner Greene saw it as pure speculation, to make money without any thought of good design. He also brought up complaints that came to be heard frequently about the apartment building: "... born of the ever-persistent speculator, it not only had the tendency to increase the cost of the land, but it never admits of home building."^{^[44]}

Much early multifamily housing, especially the courtyard apartments, had been developed to accommodate Easterners visiting during the winter. The aim was to offer, at reasonable cost, comfortable accommodations providing maximum enjoyment of California's climate and vegetation, while using a minimum amount of space. This background helped make it feasible to house new middle-class residents in relatively modest housing when they moved to California permanently.

An article in a 1923 issue of The Western Architect described the role of California in apartment development, while discussing a Chicago apartment hotel: "The apartment hotel came into being in California out of the exigencies of a tourist pressure which produced there also the bungalow court, the cafeteria and other short-cuts to service and comfort."^{^[45]} Since apartment hotels had been common in New York for some time, it appears that the difference in these units is that they included disappearing beds and, often, a kitchenette; evidently these are the California contributions. The buildings described basically contain efficiency apartments, but include a certain amount of service including maid service, laundering and often dining. These apartment hotels were considered excellent investments as city dwellers turned from the problems of running a large house and retaining servants while maintaining privacy and home life. The importance of good location in a quality neighborhood, close to shops and transit was stressed.

Courtyard Apartments

The courtyard apartment form was partially derived from the early California missions and adobe houses, with doorways opening onto a central courtyard. The relationship between house and garden was particularly important, since the mild climate and the lush foliage made it feasible for the garden to be a liveable extension of the house. Even people of modest means often expected to have a house in a landscaped garden^{^[46]} It was natural that everyone wanted a part of the California dream; courtyard and garden apartments opened it up to nearly everyone.

By the end of the 1920s the courtyard apartment had reached great heights in Los Angeles. Typically, each residence had its own entrance and direct access to a court, often filled with arcades, porches, fountains and semi-tropical foliage. Sometimes private garden spaces or patios were also provided. The lush landscaping and extensive detailing and features such as tiles and fountains heightened the sense of place.

The courtyard apartment lent itself to both plain and elegant treatments, with differentiation based on the neighborhood and the amenities in the buildings and the units. The wealthy and well-known lived in the more elegant apartments, while less elaborate buildings met the needs of working men and women. According to Polyzoides, et al.: "A large proportion of early court dwellers were midwestern retirees on fixed incomes whose quarters were, in most cases, modest one-bedroom or efficiency units... They combine the advantages of compact, easily maintained living quarters with the provision of communal outdoor places for public contact."^{^[47]}

A romanticized version of Spanish Colonial Revival was the most common style, but architects also adapted the form to modern styles. An early example was Irving Gill's Lewis Court (1910) near Pasadena. This was designed to demonstrate how a high quality of life could be provided in higher density, low cost housing, by organizing individual units into a "cohesive, urban form to permit more usable open space."^{^[48]} The twelve small white cubical apartments, in a stripped-down Mission Revival style look like separate structures, each with its own garden. His Horatio West Courts complex (1919) in Santa Monica is also based on the early Mission Revival style, but is so abstracted that it more closely resembles the newly-developing International Modern style. Gill's work was also notable for using new technology, poured concrete walls, to reduce costs.

In the 1930s Richard Neutra adapted his modern style to apartments, terracing modernistic units into hillsides, with central gardens or individual open spaces, providing light, air and greenery.^{^[49]} His Strathmore Apartments (1937) evoked the local traditions of southwestern Pueblo Indians and bungalow courts, but acceptance was slow because the design differed so strikingly from the more traditional residential styles of Mediterranean Revival and Craftsman.^{^[50]} R.M. Schindler and other avant garde architects also adapted the bungalow court/garden apartment concept and the International Style to the steep sites that were preferred in West Los Angeles.

Construction slowed during the Depression, but people continued to move to California in the hopes of a better life. Numerous apartment developments, both public and private, were constructed. Even the public projects were typically one- to two-story buildings grouped around garden spaces. Some of these, like Baldwin Hills Village, were outstanding in their integration of housing into the landscape and providing residents of a high density development with access to pleasant outside spaces.^{^[51]} Although Baldwin Hills Village was built as low income housing in 1942, it is not only built around a series of landscaped spaces, but each unit has its own garden.

Courtyard and garden apartments were found elsewhere on the West Coast as well. Courtyards, much different from those in Los Angeles, became common features in Seattle apartments during the 1920s.



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