"THREE IN ONE" FLATS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 106, 5 May 1923, Page 17

"THREE IN ONE" FLATS.

TABLOID HOMES OF NEW YORK.

With a population which threatens to exceed 10,000,000 within the next twenty years, the housing problem in New York is developing difficulties which grow more, formidable every year.

I'robably it is no exaggeration to say that, since the war, with about -100,000 dwellings divided among 1,250,000 families, the majority ot people living in New York have had to content themselves with quarters not much larger than those accorded to passengers on a TransAtlantic liner. And the rents range from £50 to £200 a year for each room.

The latest experiments in flats consists of an "apartment hotel. ,, warranted to reduce housekeeping to an irreducible minimum of work and expense. "Three in one" room Hats is the title of these new Lilliputian homes.

The home seeker enters a vestibule giving on a room furnished with a diuingtable. a sofa, a writing-table, ami several chairs. At night-time lie opens a door leading into an alcove which serves the double purpose of a dressing and bath room. From behind a door two beds, neatly camouflaged by a curtain, are released by pressing a button from their pendant position and are piloted into what a moment before was a living and dining room, but is now a bedroom.

In a second alcove is a little kitchen, with a neat sink with hot and cold water supply. a,n ice rhe.-t surmounted by a china closet on the left side, and. on the right, a gas range with an oven and two burners surmounted by a pantry. Underneath is a drawer containing saucepans and other culinary implements.

One hundred and ten pieces of china and six sots of everything needed in the way of silver and cutlery are packed into the two tiny closets, and over the pis range is affixed a 'soft-toned and attractive T 'afhes't(7s"'ciirtain"' to net as a ■f, ..,,-■ ,--. r .- - ' l The dinihgVpdmlftaiita , (transformaifle. at Trill into a" drV-tviiig-room table) is large enough for six people.