Can someone help explain this floor plan of a mid 20th century apartment?

Upvote:1

Answer to the question 2. Some walls are part of the whole building construction and can't be moved. I think, it is one of such. Of course, it is the bad design, but not idiotic one.

Upvote:2

This is just unsupported speculation, but...

There's a possibility that the apartment was originally intended for the large room to be the bedroom and the room on the right to be the living/hosting area. Since there don't appear to be room-specific features in either room (unlike the kitchen in the upper-left or the bathroom in the mid-left), the difference between bedroom and living area is purely a matter of furniture arrangement.

It would then not be unreasonable for the only door to open to the living area, with the bedroom having a window open to the hallway.

Upvote:3

The hallway window provides light to the hallway, obviously (the light passes in a direct line through the living room window).

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It was likely a conversion from 3 19th century tenement rooms to an apartment compliant with later NYC building codes. NYC had city-specific building codes until 2008. That interior window may have been a door, or it may have been an interior window to provide some light to an apartment/room without access to natural light. (Yes, these existed.)

My guess is that the window/door placement would have had something to do with where pipes for heat and water were located. Plumbing was a retrofit for these buildings. In some cases, staircases had to be modified or added as well.

NYC has traditionally has had a shortage of housing, so people had/have a tendency to accept certain undesirable things that wouldn't fly in other places. Also, starting in the 20th century, NYC has a history of regulating certain aspects of apartment living to a much greater degree than other places. Controls were placed on rental rates, for example, which may have limited the renovation budget significantly.

Upvote:21

Pass-thru closet designs like the one in the drawing were common in houses and apartments built during the first half of the 20th century. They lost popularity by the 1960's when squeezing the most usable space from a home plan became most important. If you look at photos of homes/apartments from this era you'll see numerous examples.

The hallway looks like a poor design. I've been in some NYC apartments that had bad/odd layouts so it wouldn't be entirely impossible to encounter one like this in real life. However, I would tend to think the overly long hallway here is probably done for dramatic reasons.

Interior windows like the one in the picture were often used to allow air flow through the apartment back in pre-air conditioning days and when people where a bit more trusting about leaving doors and windows open.

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