Clubs As Alternatives To Apartments ?
The whole theory of the modern mega-apartment complex is 'radically unsound' to paraphrase the great Irish bard. The time has come for it to give way to the small private club with its limited number of micro apartments. This is as true for suburbia as for the city. Consider what has happened to New York. Its last vestiges of enlightened culture are disappearing, replaced with a homogeneous bore of vertical shopping malls. Where the blight of bland dull modern architecture is interrupted here and there with garishness and vulgarity one knows not whether he feels relief or depression. About the only thing retaining its wondrous charm, grandeur, and its majestic stateliness is the Metropolitan Museum. Yet even it is under assault. On its Fifth Avenue side, where is to be found some of the priciest real estate in the city, the decorum befitting it has been seriously breached by arrays of cheap food carts befouling the air with the stench of burning grease. As well one finds all sorts of scruffy souvenir hawkers and disheveled artists vainly struggling to drum up a sale.
Nineteenth century New York was another matter entirely. This was the heyday of the private club about which curbedNY has written brilliantly The private club began as a place for like minded individuals to gather for the pleasure of their own company and betterment of their intellectual and artistic natures. This cultural high point came to an end under the coercive collectivism of militant socialism: Individuals were to be denied the right of self selected groups of their own devise. Clubs must either allow all to join or lose their tax exempt status amounting to forced dissolution. In retrospect, it becomes clear that socialism's first assault on freedom, the deployment of taxation,
was simply the initial attack, the attack against the private club being merely the opening of a new
front in the war.
Not surprisingly under the assault of socialism the population of Manhattan has plummeted from its high in the early 1900s of close to 2.5 million to a low in 1980 of 1.5 million. At this juncture, in the wake of the Covid crisis, the situation in New York as indeed in most US cities is probably hopeless. The future of the United states has probably now turned decisively to the suburb, a future Frank Lloyd Wright argued and advocated for in his Broadacre City polemic already some one hundred years ago.
To that end VRT would like to offer a model for the suburban apartment building of the future. There is a front court with two parking places per apartment to accommodate couples and visitors. There is a greenhouse with hot tub to find solace during the colder months of the year. There is a
private back garden for lounging and outdoor dining. There is a club living room for lounging and TV along with a galley kitchen and long dining room with space for 20.
As designed the club can accommodate up to 24 adults. There are six micro duplex units with 2 micro apartments each with King Bed, Kitchenette, bath with shower, toilet, and sink, and each unit has its own combo washer / dryer. In this way residents can deal with essentials in the privacy of their own unit and move to more social spaces as they are so inclined. This eliminates shared kitchens and baths which tend toward disarray while all too often becoming points of conflict.
It is VRT's vision that such clubs arise and multiply, each specializing, having its own common interests, attracting tenants accordingly. In this way housing becomes much cheaper as less space is required per capita, while at the same much richer social relationships so commonplace in pre socialist America are re-activated, cultivated, and fostered creating a living environment where like minded individuals can thrive under delightful harmonious conditions.
