A BUILDING SCHEME.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 12956, 22 November 1910, Page 4

A BUILDING SCHEME.

-A houso containing seventeen flats, each of which is to be rented at the sum of £5000 • a year, is- the Jatest building scheme for New York. Hotel apartments which with complete service fetch £9000 or £10,000 annually have, long numbered among the luxuries for families of. practically unlimited wealth,' but no New Yorker until now has 1>&on /able to pay more than £400 a year for an unfurnished flat./ The new "fiat palace" (says the "New York Mail") is- designed if not to solve at least to reduce the complexities of the servant problem 1 , which afflicts even the members of the! highest' plutocracy. . - ' '. , It is being erected in "Millionaire's Avenue" and 81st street, which hitherto has been reserved for the private mansions of exceedingly wealthy men. Already five of the uncompleted flats have Been leased for periods ranging from five to nine years. They each contain eighteen rooms, of which the. four principal—salon, dining, and liv^ ing rooms, and gallery— cover an, area of .2500 feet, .which can be converted ai' will -into one immense hall. for entertaining. The flats represent the apotheosis -of , luxury ;'" each having its own lift, refrigerating plant, and incinerating apparatus for the destruc^. tion of refuse, as well as vacuum cleaners and electric laundry and ironing machinery. No fewer than! 1600 families among the wealthier residents of New York are vacating their own houses this autumn in order to occupy flats where they will no longer be helpless martyrs to the servant problem.