A railroad apartment (or railroad flat) is an apartment with a series of rooms that are accessed from a hallway that runs the length of the apartment from the front to the back door. The name comes from the layout's similarity to that of a typical (mid-20th century or earlier) passenger train car. Such cars had compartments, each typically holding four to six passengers, accessed by a narrow hallway running along the entire length of one side.
This style is most common in New York City, San Francisco, and their surrounding areas. Railroad apartments are common in tenement or even modern apartment buildings, and are sometimes found in subdivided brownstones.
It differs from a shotgun house, which has a series of rooms connected directly in series but with no hallway. Rooms in a railroad apartment may also connect directly, such as with panel doors that connect the living room to the dining room.
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. Many early railroad apartments were extremely narrow, and most buildings were five or six stories high. Few early buildings had internal sanitation, and bathrooms emptied raw sewage into the back yard. In some cases, one family would take up residence in each room, with the hallway providing communal space.
Video Railroad apartment
See also
- Enfilade (architecture) - similar design in grand European architecture of the Baroque period
- List of house types
Maps Railroad apartment
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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