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Old 01-26-2021, 12:07 AM
 
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Common in parts of upper Manhattan, The Bronx, and Brooklyn.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8332...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8415...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8696...7i16384!8i8192

They tend to be 5-6 stories, and have this distinctive shape. They seem pretty unique to NYC and were mostly built from the 1920s to 1941.

They're my favorite type of residential building by far, and I wish there were more of them even in NYC.
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Old 01-26-2021, 05:39 AM
 
Location: Germantown, Philadelphia
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If their entrance courtyards didn't have the dimensions of narrow light wells, I think these might be classified as "courtyard apartment buildings." And I suspect they're called that anyway, even though their courtyards are narrow.

The building pictured here, in West Philadelphia's University City neighborhood, is another example of this type, except that the street floor of the light-well courtyard is taken up by the building lobby. (BTW, a photo of what the building looks like post-renovations can be found in this article on the same site, which I now edit.)

One block to the east of this building is an older, more elegant example of the style: Garden Court, built in the early 1920s (Garden Court Plaza, the building in the photo above, was part of the same development but not completed until 1929):

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9521...7i16384!8i8192

There are a few other examples of this type in Philadelphia. The best-known of them is probably Rittenhouse Plaza, at 19th and Walnut streets, on the north side of Rittenhouse Square. There's a cluster of such buildings in the 4800 block of Pine Street, and another single building on 49th just north of Pine that had sat abandoned for many years but recently got restored.
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Old 01-26-2021, 09:00 AM
 
Location: Providence, RI
12,824 posts, read 21,993,461 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl View Post
If their entrance courtyards didn't have the dimensions of narrow light wells, I think these might be classified as "courtyard apartment buildings." And I suspect they're called that anyway, even though their courtyards are narrow.
I think they fit the "Courtyard Apartment" bill anyway. There's variation even within the style and it's entirely possible that the "courtyard" on some was reduced to the footprint you see in some of those streetview images. These are all over the Bronx. While more affluent buildings had larger courtyards, some lower/middle income buildings had smaller ones like what you see in those pictures (probably wasn't just concrete when the building was first constructed). Some of the lower-income "courtyard" buildings in NYC sort of adopted one the signatures of the classic NYC dumbell tenement, the "light/vent" shaft. The narrow courtyard in this instance serves dual purposes (as a courtyard, and as a means of ventilating and providing light to interior rooms). Most of the prewar buildings in the Bronx look a lot like this (with a similar courtyard in the rear).
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Old 01-26-2021, 09:42 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lrfox View Post
I think they fit the "Courtyard Apartment" bill anyway. There's variation even within the style and it's entirely possible that the "courtyard" on some was reduced to the footprint you see in some of those streetview images. These are all over the Bronx. While more affluent buildings had larger courtyards, some lower/middle income buildings had smaller ones like what you see in those pictures (probably wasn't just concrete when the building was first constructed). Some of the lower-income "courtyard" buildings in NYC sort of adopted one the signatures of the classic NYC dumbell tenement, the "light/vent" shaft. The narrow courtyard in this instance serves dual purposes (as a courtyard, and as a means of ventilating and providing light to interior rooms). Most of the prewar buildings in the Bronx look a lot like this (with a similar courtyard in the rear).
The Bronx has a mix of those dumbell buildings and the Manhattan style tenements with no front courtyard (I am hesitant to call them tenements because they're pretty nice looking). There were way more of the latter prior to the 70s arson wave.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8287...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8285...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8076...7i16384!8i8192

I think a variation within the dumbells (a pretty notable one) is that they generally didn't have elevators in the earlier years of them being built, while by the end of the 20s they mostly did.

As far as the South Bronx goes, it seems like the likelihood of the buildings surviving the 70s arson wave was elevator dumbell>non-elevator dumbell>tenement.

I also don't think that the dumbells were made for lower income, even the less grandiose ones were built for the middle class who wanted to escape the slummy conditions of Manhattan. Even in the 70s some of these neighborhoods were still considered middle class (like Morris Heights which had a lot of its buildings destroyed by arson in the 70s even though it wasn't a slummy neighborhood).
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Old 01-26-2021, 09:45 PM
 
6,222 posts, read 3,593,062 times
Reputation: 5055
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl View Post
If their entrance courtyards didn't have the dimensions of narrow light wells, I think these might be classified as "courtyard apartment buildings." And I suspect they're called that anyway, even though their courtyards are narrow.

The building pictured here, in West Philadelphia's University City neighborhood, is another example of this type, except that the street floor of the light-well courtyard is taken up by the building lobby. (BTW, a photo of what the building looks like post-renovations can be found in this article on the same site, which I now edit.)

One block to the east of this building is an older, more elegant example of the style: Garden Court, built in the early 1920s (Garden Court Plaza, the building in the photo above, was part of the same development but not completed until 1929):

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9521...7i16384!8i8192

There are a few other examples of this type in Philadelphia. The best-known of them is probably Rittenhouse Plaza, at 19th and Walnut streets, on the north side of Rittenhouse Square. There's a cluster of such buildings in the 4800 block of Pine Street, and another single building on 49th just north of Pine that had sat abandoned for many years but recently got restored.
That second one is a true (and really nice) courtyard building like the ones in Jackson Heights, Queens. But even nicer.
The first one is nice too, but seems like the courtyard is comparably limited in functionality (like what we see in the typical Bronx/upper Manhattan dumbell).
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Old 01-30-2021, 12:15 PM
bu2
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Foamposite View Post
Common in parts of upper Manhattan, The Bronx, and Brooklyn.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8332...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8415...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8696...7i16384!8i8192

They tend to be 5-6 stories, and have this distinctive shape. They seem pretty unique to NYC and were mostly built from the 1920s to 1941.

They're my favorite type of residential building by far, and I wish there were more of them even in NYC.
Aren't they what are called "brownstones?"
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Old 01-30-2021, 05:28 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
Aren't they what are called "brownstones?"
No, Brownstones are a lot different.

These are brownstones

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6835...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8043...7i16384!8i8192
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Old 02-05-2021, 08:27 PM
 
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I believe those are New Law tenements.
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Old 02-07-2021, 02:01 PM
 
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These two links might shed some light:

https://www.brownstoner.com/guides/a...war-apartment/

https://www.brickunderground.com/blo...war_apartments

NYC maintains pretty good records of these buildings:

The Bronx County Historical Society
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Old 02-07-2021, 08:00 PM
 
Location: Germantown, Philadelphia
14,147 posts, read 9,038,713 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by webster View Post
These two links might shed some light:

https://www.brownstoner.com/guides/a...war-apartment/

https://www.brickunderground.com/blo...war_apartments

NYC maintains pretty good records of these buildings:

The Bronx County Historical Society
Both very good articles, but "prewar" and "postwar" tells you nothing about their exterior appearance, which is what I think the OP was focusing on in that first post.

Prewar buildings come in a variety of styles and building footprints, even if their interior floorplans have common elements like separate kitchens. Most "prewar" apartments on the Upper East and West sides of Manhattan, for instance, don't look like the ones in the OP when you view them from the street; you don't really encounter those U- or C-shaped footprints until you get up into the island's northern reaches, like Washington Heights.

"New Law tenement" probably tells you more about what the building footprint is, given how NYC tenement laws sought to ensure that every room in a tenement would have light and air.

But in any other city, the buildings in question would be courtyard apartment buildings.
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