TOP-FLOOR HOMES

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 15 February 1930, Page 7

TOP-FLOOR HOMES

.FAVOURED IN LONDON. Londoners are finding out the joys of living near to tue shy, and top-noor homes are increasingly in demand. inis is a complete reversal of the old order. At one time tlie rule used to be ‘'the higher you went, the cheaper the rent.” Starting with the first floor tho charges were proportionately less th© farther from the street one dwelt, says the “Star,” London.

The people who used to occupy the top —and cheapest—floor were in the haoit of apologising to friends for being iso high up. Now, however, they boast about it, and closer proximity to the sky is no excuse for getting the rent lowered Then poor souls were forced to accept attics and garrets in which to starve, and, perhaps, to die. Nowadays a different class of people deliberately choose them in order to live—and live well.

One finds the fact of a flat -being at the top of a building being emphasised both by agents and home-seekers. They expatiate on the numerous adTantjages. Who would live on the ground level, they ask, with the incessant noise of other folk overhead? Nearer the sky there is more light, more air,. more quietude. The street may be dingy below, the outlook depressing. but up " above one can often get a view that lias to be seen to be believed. It frequently happens, too, that the roof is available as a garden, and these overhead London pleasaunces are becoming surprisingly numerous and popular. Boarding-houses and other establishments which used to let attic floors as a last resource now find these once despised locales paying propositions. Students, musicians, artists and others whose work demands seclusion and quiet seek these rooms in preference to more, pretentious’ apartments. And they are no longer the squalid, bare places where genius eked out a miserable existence, but comfortably furnished, cosy eyries. This growing fondness for living near to the sky is also noticeable in the arrangement of up-to-date private residences. The high-up rooms that used to be servants’ bedrooms and box or lumber rooms are nowadays rarely put to such uses. They are coveted as sitting-rooms. studios, libraries and bedrooms. Their constructional peculiarities often lend themselves to very individual decorative schemes.