"THREE IN ONE" FLATS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 14

"THREE IN ONE" FLATS

TABLOID HOMES OF NEW YORK.

With a population which threatens to exceed.. 10,000,000 within the next 20 years, the housing problem in New York is developing difficulties which grow more formidable every year, declares the New York correspondent of the "Daily Mail." Probably it is no exaggeration to say that since the war, with about 400,000 dwellings divided among 1,250,000 families, the majority of people living in New York have had to content themselves with quarters not much larger . than those accorded to passengers in a transatlantic liner..'.And the rents range from £50 to £200 a year for each room.

The latest experiment in flats consists of an "apartment hotel," warranted to reduce housekeeping to an irreducible minimum of work and expense. "Three in one" room flats is the title of these new Lilliputian homes. The home seeker enters a vestibule giving on a room furnished with a diningtable, a sofa, a writing-table, and several chairs. At night time he opens a door leading into an alcove which serves the double purpose of a dressing' and bath room. From behind the door two beds, neatly camouflaged by a curtain, are released by pressing a button from their pendent 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, an ice chest surmounted by a china closet on the left side, and, on the right, a gas range with an oven find two burners surmounted by a pantry.-' Underneath is a drawer containing saucepans antl other culinary implements.

One hundred and ten pieces of china and six sets of everything•needed in the way of silver.and cutlery are packed into the two tiny closets, and over the gas range is affixpd a "soft-toned and attractive asbestos curtain" to act as a safeguard against fire. The dining-room table (transformable at will into a draw-ing-room table) is large enough for six people.