All This & Country Too

Once an apartment was a place that people lived in because they could not afford anything else. Its major advantage was that it was usually near the middle of things. But the notion of what an apartment is has gradually changed. The change began with the garden apartments, which offered a house and garden for those who could not afford a garden of their own--or at least, did not want to have one to take care of. Garden apartments ringed cities across the land, from Dallas and Houston in the Southwest, and St. Louis and Detroit in the Midwest, to Atlanta and Washington in the East.

Now the apartment has taken on a new elegance and a new appeal that is a far cry from the cramped, pavement-bound image of its original version. The new apartment offers not only an air space of one's own, without the nuisance of home keeping, but throws in most of the facilities of country living: swimming pools, sauna baths, tennis courts, golf courses, marinas, landscaped acres for postprandial strolling, and playgrounds for the young. And usually closer to town.

View from the Terrace. Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, for instance, perched on the brink of the craggy Palisades, are the four 15-story buildings of Horizon House spaced over 32 acres of wooded grounds. Most living rooms and terraces face out across the Hudson, with views of the Manhattan skyline and the George Washington Bridge.

A studio apartment with terrace rents for $195 a month; a three-bedroom, split-level goes for $450; penthouses on the 15th floor with three bedrooms, three baths, a maid's room and bath, an atrium open to the sky, and a sunken living room are $1,000 a month. In addition to the view, other attractions are available at relatively modest extra cost to all tenants: access to the free-form swimming pool carved out of the cliff is $100 a year per family, garage parking is $25 a month, limousine service from Horizon House to Manhattan executive suites is $15 a week and Horizon House's own school bus takes kids to nearby schools for $2.50 a week.

Fish from Balcony. The Horizon House idea has its enthusiasts in other parts of the U.S. In Lisle, 111., 25 miles outside Chicago, Four Lakes Village is made up of apartments clustered around an abandoned rock quarry that has been transformed into a trout-and bass-stocked lake; each apartment has a 24-ft. balcony jutting over the water, and at-home fishing is popular with tenants. During the winter there is ice skating. A one-bedroom apartment rents for $150 a month; two-bedrooms are $175.

Waterside living also appeals to the tenants of The Cove, located at Tiburon on San Francisco Bay, eight miles from the city. Here the Japanesy two-story buildings are bordered by deck and dock, with private craft tied up at the door. Most tenants work in San Francisco and commute by car and--in some instances--boat. Rents at The Cove range from $185 for a one-bedroom apartment, to $525 for three bedrooms. On the outskirts of Los Angeles, the Penthouse apartments hover over the Pacific shore line, offer tenants a beach, a Gay Nineties-style billiard room, and an acre of terraced gardens with olive, orange and lemon trees.

Beyond questions of convenience, the underlying idea was articulated 40 years ago by Le Corbusier as an answer to the ever increasing density of population around major cities. Corbusier proposed to stack people vertically in high-rise towers so that the surrounding land could be freed for parks and playgrounds. The idea lay dormant while the cheap land within easy commuting distance sprouted a crop of postwar homes sold on easy terms.

As the suburbs filled up, land prices soared, and the idea took on a new practicality as a real estate venture. It is based on a principle, even older than Corbusier's, that a community can afford what an individual cannot.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.