The Upper Depths

In Chicago, Charlene Scanland was primping in front of the bathroom mirror one morning when a hoarse voice came out of the medicine cabinet saying: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?" Replied Charlene, without pausing to analyze the situation: "You are." Later, the owner of the mystery voice came around to find out who had answered the query so sweetly. He was a handsome bachelor who lived in the next apartment, but the story had no romantic ending for Charlene: he married her roommate instead.

Gargle, Rattle. Dwellers in the new "luxury" barracks in many U.S. cities have discovered that the bathroom is no longer humanity's last haven of privacy. Built back-to-back in most buildings for reasons of economy, with thin walls, echoing acoustics and interconnecting ventilators, bathrooms have turned into monitoring booths. Whether they want to or not, tenants soon become all too familiar with the showering, gargling and flushing schedules of their neighbors.

And the involuntary eavesdropping is not confined to the bathroom: occupants of Manhattan's vast Washington Square Village have long complained that they can lie in bed at night and hear magazine pages being turned in the bed next door. "I know they are reading magazines," says one tenant, "because newspapers rattle more." Packing-crate partitions often reveal more than reading habits, and in many a new jerry-building, whole floors of amateur Chapman reporters dread facing one another in the elevators in the morning.

In one of Detroit's most elegant new buildings, residents often play a sort of gourmet game. They walk along the corridors in the evening trying to guess who is having the roast rack of lamb, the corned beef and cabbage, or the Liederkranz cheese. It is a very easy game, but the Lalky incinerator system often provides a handicap by giving off all-pervading whiffs of old eggs and sour milk.

Warp & Woof. The turnover in some Manhattan buildings is dizzying. Many families who are lucky enough to have sublet clauses in their leases exercise them within months of moving in--provided they can find a sublessee to take the rap for them. Tales of recalcitrant electronic elevators with wills of their own, narrow corridors ("Every night when I come home it looks more like a cell block"), warping floors, woofing plumbing and cracking plaster have become standard cocktail lore.

In fact, some of Manhattan's speculative builders have plainly overreached themselves. Though buildings with names like Something East or Something Tower or Something House continue to push up like hoarfrost, and ask staggering prices (one recently built co-op on Fifth Avenue wants $129,940 for a seven-room apartment, and $18,576 a year maintenance), some of the tinder-traps-on-Hudson are finding it hard to land customers. Apartment seekers frequently are offered half a year's rent free as a lure. The older, more substantial buildings with high ceilings, soundproof walls, and proper entrance halls and dining rooms are coming back into their own, with the result that most of them are being converted into co-ops by tenants who want to ensure their footholds.

Most sought-after in Manhattan are the city's few remaining brownstones, which have escaped the wrecker's ball, block and dynamite. Old houses that 20 years ago were being abandoned simply because they were out of fashion have become the new symbol of civilized living. Says one high-rise refugee: "We had an apartment on the 28th floor of one of those new buildings overhanging the river. Sure, it had a great view, but it was like living on a cruise ship. Now we have a parlor floor in a sweet old brownstone in the Village, and they'll have to blast to get us out. The only trouble is, I'm afraid they will."

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