Why were apartments started?

I would rather a house, and they were started because of transportation. When people began to congregate in cities, to be close to the new jobs offered by the Industrial Revolution, the only form of transport was by horse. To avoid having to travel for several hours to get to work, people moved into the nearest available space. Since space was at a premium, the available spaces were small and relatively inexpensive. Voila! Apartments!

For the same amount of building material, apartments are more efficient. As an example, think of a cube shaped house. Five walls are exposed to the outdoors to lose heat in the winter or need cooling in the summer. Now put three of those cubes together in a row. The center cube .only has three walls exposed to the weather. The end cubes have 4 walls. All of their utility bills are lower. Now imagine a wall of cubes. The middle floors only have 2 sides exposed. Their heating and cooling costs are 40% of a single free standing cubes.

Let’s run services to the free standing cube. How far from the road is it? You have to run water, power, telephone, cable, sewers from the street to the single cube. Now stack a few together. You can cut the wire, and piping distances significantly by running each into a single feeder pipe that goes out to the road.
Now consider public transportation, roads, sidewalks, street lighting…

then someone thinks: “Hey let’s supply a single maintenance guy to take care of all the apartments. He will keep the standard parts in stock and we can charge a maintenance fee.”
And so it goes…

(I prefer my house with lots of land.)

Actually, apartment houses go much further back than the Industrial Revolution. There were apartment buildings in ancient Rome and many of those are still standing. They were called Insula and were occupied by the middle class on down to the poorer classes. Wealthy citizens lived in domus (single family homes). Like today, many of the insula had businesses on the ground floors. They were basically inexpensive to build, and you could make the most money from the most people with the smallest building footprint. The higher you go, the more square footage you have, but it’s air space, not ground space. Profit!

http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2006/03/the_earliest_ap.html

I prefer a house because of the privacy and noise considerations.

This looks like it has what you are looking for:

“As far as I can tell, the oldest apartments — multi-family multi-story dwellings — were built more than two millennia ago, in the Roman republic — and they are spookily modern.

“Back then, cities were bounded by walls. Land inside them was valuable. But the workers – shopkeepers, laborers, maids, housekeepers, stevedores – had to live close to their jobs. Roman law – the first zoning of which I am aware – limited building height to the equivalent of fifty feet. So floor space was at a premium. Enter the insulae.

“By the end of the 1st century BC, a growing pressure for land in many larger, overpopulated cities gave rise to the insula, or apartment. The term insula had originally been applied to rectangularly shaped town building plots. 6–8 apartment blocks could occupy one insula, and were usually designed around an open courtyard. However, with most apartment blocks being three stories high, at least, this simply became a light well. Shops usually fronted the streets at ground level.”

I do wonder if ancient cliff dwellings would classify as an even earlier form of apartment. If nothing else, they might have provided the inspiration for apartments.

Personally, I would rather live in a house. I like having my own rules, a little bit of land, not having to listen to my neighbors, and not having to worry about being too loud for them. However, the cost of apartments makes them a good starting point.

@CaptainHarley What do you mean when you say that they were started for transportation?

They seem to go back as far as the history of man. In the 10th century, native Americans constructed large multi-unit dwellings. Probably because they were easier to build and for group defense.

My answer is short and to the point: apartments were invented for two reasons. an ever increasing population and money. you can understand each point, right?

Housing people together, like peas in a can, saves space, also like sardines.

No apartment for me, the walls are paper-thin.

When you say apartment, do you mean all places to live in a building? Or, only places that are rented? In NY apartment means both; in FL apartment means a place someone rents in a building, condominium means you own it.

These days. You get a house when you can’t take your neighbors boom tunes and their attitudes any more.

Here is Mesa Verde, the apartment dwellings of the Anastazi Indians. This is near the four corners of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

http://www.durangoreservations.org/mesa-verde

What I love about living in a building is having the incinerator a few steps from my door, and amenities right their on the property like pool, gym, doorman/concierge (depending on the building obviously) and if it is close to shopping, or if it has retail on the first floor even better. Also, if I travel, easier to close up and less worry, not to mention the maintenance of thegrounds is cared for by the building. It’s the convenience more than anything.

I like living in a house because I have more space, and I don’t have to worry about neighbor noise as much.

I have gone from a house to an apartment to a house to an apartment to a house and I am currently in an apartment. I like it here as it is very convenient for all amenities, it is low maintenance and is worry free.

oh, also, I tend to feel safe in an apartment. When someone broke into my house it was through the master bedroom window on the first floor. If I am on the fifth floor of an apartment building, I am less worried about leaving my window open for fresh air (my window was not open when I was broken into, they actually broke it).

@bobbinhood

Just what I said .. “To avoid having to travel for several hours to get to work, people moved into the nearest available space.”

@CaptainHarley Sorry about that. I’m not sure if you edited, or if my computer was just freaking out, but when I first read your post, I only saw the first sentence. I see now that you did explain yourself already. :)

It lets more people live on a certain piece of land.

Source: Hong Kong apartments. Land is scarce there, so almost everyone lives in an apartment.

@bobbinhood

Kewl. : )