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Manhattan’s $300,000 Roof Dwellings

By ORVILLE H. KNEEN

The Story of the Penthouse Apartment

Roofs of metropolitan skyscrapers are now the most sought-after and expensive sites for exclusive apartment dwellings. Rentals for some of the roof houses range around $2000 per room per year!

I HAVE heard much about New York penthouses lately. Thinking of a penthouse as a little shack on a dingy roof, I asked a realty friend to show me one.
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A VISIT INSIDE UNCLE SAM’S New Gold Vault Fortress

Built to withstand fires, bombs and the raids of super criminals, the nation’s newest treasure house is the last word in safety. Here are the reasons why.

by JAMES NEVIN MILLER

UNCLE SAM’S new gold vault is the greatest and strongest fortress in the world. No fire can harm it. No bomb can damage its mighty walls. The most brilliant cracksmen cannot penetrate its baffling defenses.

Built of steel and concrete whose strength is unbelievable, this giant treasure house is equipped with mysterious passageways, secret doors and an automatic alarm system whose scale is the largest ever conceived by the mind of man.
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“COURTS” offer Luxury for MOTORISTS

YOU can see the world through a windshield today and live in your own private home each night while you’re doing it. Not the dwelling you started from, of course, but one offering similar comforts, luxuries and privacy.

You’ll find these overnight homes in motor courts, and if you’ve never spent a night in a court cottage, a pleasant surprise awaits you. The motor court is a recent development of the motor age, an individual type of accommodation designed specifically for motorists, entirely unlike any form of “night lodging” heretofore available.
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World’s Tallest Building

In this drawing, the artist has shown how the “Palace of the Soviets,” now under construction in Moscow, will compare in height with the Empire State building, in New York City, at present the world’s tallest structure, and with Europe’s tallest, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Palace of the Soviets will be completed in 1942 and, including the stainless steel statue of Lenin ©n top, will be the world’s tallest and most spacious building. The main hall will seat 25,000 and another hall will seat 6,000. The ceiling of the interior dome will be 300 feet high. The building will be serviced by 120 elevators, 60 escalators, and will contain halls, clubs, galleries, museums, and will house government archives.

New Building Construction
The introduction and use of metal and glass as construction material has been hailed as the greatest forward step in architecture since the introduction of steel frame buildings. The lighting features illustrated on this page are but one of the many advantageous features of this new combination. Buildings can be put up in one-half the time and at a 20% saving in cost from the ordinary masonry. Read the rest of this entry »

ARCTIC CABINS HAVE WINDOWS HEWN FROM ICE

Log shelters constructed in northern Russia for Soviet fishermen have windows of ice instead of glass. Thick slabs, cut from clear ice, were hewn to shape, fitted into the window frames, and frozen in place. Constant sub-zero temperatures keep the ice windows frozen solid throughout the long winter months. Seen from the outside, the ice windows sparkle with the electric lights in the cabin’s interior.

Chimneys Blow Smoke Rings

To add an unusual touch to these Orvieto, Italy, chimneys, they were constructed on spiral lines so that the smoke comes out of them in graceful curves and rings.

Boxcar Homes for $3 Per Month

AN INNOVATION in living quarters is represented in a boxcar village which has recently sprung up in New York City.

Inhabitants of this unique village, pictured below, pay only $3 a month rent, or $6 a week for room and board—reasonable enough in these hard times.
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That’s a really neat looking house.

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Jackie Gleason’s Round House

THE MANY TALENTS and accomplishments of Jackie Gleason would put him out of the ordinary class of home builders. And Round Rock Hill, his new home on the outskirts of Peekskill, N. Y., is just that—out of the ordinary. Built on top of a hill in the center of nine acres of dense woodland, the house provides the comedian-composer-actor with “a pattern for living and working” — it contains his office and a broadcasting studio as well as his home.

Everything about the home is round. There’s an eight-foot round bed with a built-in television set in the ceiling above it; a round shower room in glass and tile; round and semicircular rugs and furniture. Even the stairways curve to match the curve of the outside walls. In the center of the round living room is a huge triple fireplace. The studio room focuses on a grand piano.

The house is built on three levels across the 175-foot front elevation. Glass walls everywhere look out over the wooded hills.

Ready-Made House Costs $500

Equipped with a stove, refrigerator, window screens, dining table, couch, and other home accessories, a new type of prefabricated house costs less than $500. Designed as a first unit to which later additions may be made, the factory-built structure includes living room, dinette, and kitchen, with folding beds for four people.

ARCHITECT DESIGNS COTTON HOUSES

Houses of cotton are proposed by Lawrence Kocher, noted architect, to solve the low-cost housing problem. Models of two types; a $1,500 five-room home and a week-end house, have been designed. A weatherproof exterior is provided by a roof and walls of fireproofed cotton ducking stretched over a wooden structural frame. Inner walls are also of cotton. Insulating material may be added to exclude heat and cold. Since the canvas is flexible, it is adaptable to any shaped surface.

GARAGE BUILT OF AUTO TAGS IS PROOF AGAINST RUST

Tightly sheathed on roof and sides with unused automobile license tags, a serviceable garage, seventeen feet square and ten feet high, with space for two cars has been built in Denver, Colo. The tags’ were obtained from a surplus of 22,000 left over in the office of the secretary of state. More than 10,000 of the plates, which are rust-proof, were required to cover the structure. They were laid overlapping like shingles upon a rough board siding and a layer of tar paper. A coat of paint was applied to obliterate the numbers.