Modern bathrooms are small and very compactly arranged, one to each bedroom when possible. The kitchen has been re duced to a mechanical plant (see HOUSE PLANNING), doing more satisfactorily what formerly required a room 17 by 3o ft. in the concentrated space of 7 by IQ ft. When the building does not exceed 9 or Io floors, a hand-operated dumb-waiter is installed, running from the basement to each kitchen, by means of which the janitor of the building distributes food supplies to the various tenants. Garbage is collected by the same device, although in cinerators are also widely employed. The flues of the incinerator open into all the kitchens, and garbage and waste are emptied directly into them and reduced to ashes, which can be removed from time to time at the base. This disposal system keeps the dumb-waiter car and shaft clean. A gas-stove, an all-metal kitchen cabinet, a combination porcelain sink and laundry tub, an ice box, and in recent years an electric ice-machine are generally installed when the building is erected. In America the use of an ice-box is almost universal, not only for cooling purposes during the summer heat, but because it helps to preserve food in a safe and sanitary condition throughout the year. The dining-room has one or more electric outlets convenient for toasters and elec tric grills on the dining-room table. The living-room often has a practicable fireplace, not for heating, but as a social amenity.
A single heating plant for each building or group of buildings provides the necessary warmth during the winter months, the system usually employed being steam with exposed radiators in all rooms. When the apartment building exceeds Io storeys, the hand operated dumb-waiter is hardly practical. Electrically driven "fool-proof" dumb-waiters are sometimes used, but the initial cost is large and the upkeep expensive. In the most modern practice an additional service lift is installed. This is preferably located
near the kitchen wing, or at the rear of the apartment house, to bring in food supplies, to remove garbage and waste and for similar services.
Light and an agreeable outlook are important factors in any place in which people are to live. Yet although sunshine is always an asset, large expanses of unbroken window surface are by no means desirable; just as in office buildings (see INDUSTRIAL AR CHITECTURE) too much glass surface, particularly in climates like that of the United States with its cold winters, causes economic waste in heating; but too little, of course, is even worse. Two win dows to a room not on a corner is considered ample, and in bed rooms and minor rooms often only one is provided. The apart ment should be so planned that cross ventilation can be had by opening any door. Because of the development and increasing use of artificial light in modern decoration, particularly in cities, large windows are often heavily draped much of the time; but it is important for each tenant to have at least one attractive outlook.
In the beginning, the particular appeal of the "flat" was the elimination of stairs. In the old-fashioned city house, built like a narrow slab in a block of similar houses, the overburdened house wife found the stairs very tiring, especially when there were six or seven flights from basement to attic. But this advantage in the flat was largely offset by the difficulty of separating living from sleeping quarters. The so-called "duplex" apartment was the first solution of this annoying problem. Here the entire apart ment unit occupies two floors, the sleeping quarters above and the living-rooms below, with a small interior stair for communi cation.
In the effort to reduce space, since part of the care of a home is its size, a low ceiling was adopted. The New York building law at present specifies a clear height of not less than eight feet; formerly it was nine. Consequently builders anxious to get the maximum return from a given piece of property build to this minimum. Even the largest and most expensive apartments sel dom exceeded 9 ft., on account of the great waste of cubic contents in the minor rooms. This has resulted in the evolution of still another type of apartment, in which, by a combination of alternating "duplex" and "simplex" floors, the living-rooms are given an extra ceiling height, bringing them back again to the proportions of the old-fashioned city home, two storeys of living rooms being placed adjacent to three storeys of minor rooms.