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De Wolfe, Elsie, 1865-1950 / The house in good taste
(1914)

XVI: the small apartment,   pp. 237-253


Page 238

THE HOUSE IN GOOD TASTE
a direct influence on the houses of the towns, so simpli-
fying the small-town business of living as well.
Of course, many of us who live in apartments either
have a little house or a big one in the country for the
summer months, or we plan for one some day! So
hard does habit die-we cannot entirely divorce our
ideas of Home from gardens and trees and green grass.
But I honestly think there is a reward for living in a
slice of a house: women who have lived long in the
country sometimes take the beauty of it for granted,
but the woman who has been hedged in by city walls
gets the fine joy of out-of-doors when she is out of
doors, and a pot of geraniums means more to her than
a whole garden means to a woman who has been denied
the privilege of watching things grow.
The modern apartment is an amazing illustration of
the rapid development of an idea. The larger ones are
quite as magnificent as any houses could be. I have
recently furnished a Chicago apartment that included
large and small salons, a huge conservatory, and a great
group of superb rooms that are worthy of a palace.
There are apartment houses in New York that offer
suites of fifteen to twenty rooms, with from five to ten
baths, at yearly rentals that approximate wealth to the
average man, but these apartments are for the few, and
there are hundreds of thousands of apartments for the
many that have the same essential conveniences.
One of the most notable achievements of the apart-
ment house architects is the duplex apartment, the little
238


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