In the last third of the nineteenth century a new housing form was quietly being
developed. In 1869 the Stuyvesant, considered New York's first apartment house, was
built on East Eighteenth Street. The building was financed by the developer Rutherfurd
Stuyvesant and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the first American architect to graduate
Line (5) from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Each man had lived in Paris, and each understood
the economic and social potential of this Parisian housing form. But the Stuyvesant
was at best a limited success. In spite of Hunt's inviting facade, the living space was
awkwardly arranged. Those who could afford them were quite content to remain in the
more sumptuous, single-family homes, leaving the Stuyvesant to young married couples
Line (10) and bachelors.
The fundamental problem with the Stuyvesant and the other early apartment buildings
that quickly followed, in the late 1870's and early 1880's, was that they were confined
to the typicaI New York building lot. That lot was a rectangular area 25 feet wide by 100
feet deep - a shape perfectly suited for a row house. The lot could also accommodate,
Line (15) a rectangular tenement, though it could not yield the square, well-lighted, and logically
arranged rooms that great apartment buildings require. But even with the awkward
interior configurations of the early apartment buildings, the idea caught on. It met the
needs of a large and growing population that wanted something better than tenements
but could not afford or did not want row houses.
Line (20) So while the city's newly emerging social leadership commissioned their mansions,
apartment houses and hotels began to sprout on multiple lots, thus breaking the initial
space constraints. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, large apartment
houses began dotting the developed portions of New York City, and by the opening
decades of the twentieth century, spacious buildings, such as the Dakota and the Ansonia,
Line (25) finally transcended the tight confinement of row house building lots. From there it was
only a small step to building luxury apartment houses on the newly created Park Avenue,
right next to the fashionable Fifth Avenue shopping area.