I Can’t Sleep - Apartments | Can’t Sleep? Learn About Life Under One Roof

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Apartments have housed people in cities for thousands of years. This episode explores the history of apartment living, how apartment buildings developed, and the different forms they have taken around the world. Along the way, you’ll hear about ancient Roman apartments, the rise of modern apartment buildings, and the many names and styles used for apartments across different countries. It’s steady and consistent, with no whispering and no sudden changes, just enough to give your mind something to follow as you wind down. Happy sleeping! Read with permission from Apartment, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartment), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. — Ad-free episodes: ⁠icantsleep.supportingcast.fm⁠Have a topic in mind? ⁠Request a topic⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Wayfair, every style, every home. By now the house has gone quiet. The street, the dishwasher. Everything but you. I can't sleep plus keeps it that way. The whole show with nothing in it, but one voice, going gently on about otters or the Orkin Trail, until you're not listening anymore. It's a private feed you tuck into the app you already use and never think of again.

Get an ad-free experience for $5.99 a month, and the first week costs nothing. Go to Ican't Sleep. Supportingcast.fm for an ad-free experience today. You can also find the link in the show notes. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I hope you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. And today's episode is about apartments. At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you own a nail salon, everything needs to be perfect from tip to toe. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs.

You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really big on care. Find an agent today at Dejardin.com slash business coverage. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT, with AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new work day. Thank you to Michael for sponsoring today's episode. This one goes out to Maya, who is a good egg. An apartment, North American English, flat, British English, Indian English, South African English, or unit, Australian English, is a self-contained housing unit that occupies part of a building.

The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably from large-scale public housing to owner-occupancy within what is legally a condominium, strata, title, or commonhold, or leasehold to tenants running from a private landlord. The buildings that contain apartments may be called different things, depending on size or country. The term apartment is favored in North America, although in some Canadian cities, flat is used for a unit which is part of a house containing two or three units, typically one to a floor. In the UK, in Australia, flat is the common term, although parts of the real estate industry has recently begun using the term apartment for large upmarket flat. lads, especially if their target group is foreign investors. In some countries, the word unit is a more general term, referring to both apartments and rental business suites.

The word unit is generally used only in the context of a specific building. Mixed-use buildings, combine commercial and residential uses, was in the same structure, Typically, mixed-use buildings consist of businesses on the lower floors, often retail and street-facing ground floor, and supporting subterranean levels, and residential apartments on the upper floors. Tenement law refers to the feudal basis of permanent property, such as land or rents.

It may be found combined as in, message or tenement to encompass all the land, buildings, and other assets of a property. In the United States and some other countries such as Canada, some apartment dwellers own their units, either as a housing cooperative in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns a building or development, or in a condominium, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments.

The word apartment denotes a residential unit or section in a building. In some locations, particularly the United States, the word connotes a rental unit owned by the building owner, and is not typically used for a condominium. In England and Wales, some flat owners own shares in the company that owns the freehold of the building, as well as holding the flat under a lease. This arrangement is commonly known as a share of freehold flat. The freehold company has the right to collect annual ground rents from each of the flat owners in the building. The freeholder can also develop or sell the building, subject to the usual planning and restrictions that might apply.

This situation does not happen in Scotland, where long leasehold of residential property was previously, unusual and is now impossible. Apartment buildings are multi-story buildings, where three or more residences are contained within one structure. Such a building may be called an apartment building, apartment complex, flat complex, block of flats, tenement, Scotland, tower block, high-rise, or occasionally man-hand. block in British English, especially if it consists of many apartments for rent. A high-rise apartment building is commonly referred to as a residential tower, apartment tower,

or block of flats in Australia. A high-rise building is defined by its hide differently in various jurisdictions. It may be only residential, in which case, it might also be called a tower block, or it might include other functions, such as hotels, offices, or shops. There is no clear difference between a tower block and a skyscraper, although a building with 50 or more stories

is generally considered a skyscraper. High-rise buildings become possible with the invention of the elevator or lift, and cheaper, more abundant building materials. Their structural system usually is made of reinforced concrete and steel. A low-rise building and mid-rise buildings have fewer stories. But the limits are not always clear. Empress defines a low-rise as an enclosed structure below 35 meters,

which is divided into regular floor level. The city of Toronto defines amid rise as a building between four and twelve stories. Most low-rise apartment buildings are walk-ups, lacking elevators. Garden apartment buildings are usually one- or two-story structures, where the individual apartments open directly to the outdoors, and where the building or complex offers landscaped grounds. The smallest self-contained apartments are referred to as studio, efficiency, or bachelor apartments in the U.S. and Canada, or Studio Flat in the U.K. These units usually consist of a large single main room, which acts as the living room, dining room, and bedroom combined, and usually also includes kitchen facilities,

with a separate bathroom. In Korea, the term one room refers to a studio apartment. A bed sit is a UK variant on single-room accommodation, a bed-sitting room, probably without cooking facilities, with a shared bathroom. A bed-sit is not self-contained, and so is not an apartment or flat, as this article uses the terms.

It forms part of what the U.K. government calls a house in multiple occupation. The American variant of the bed sit is the single-room occupancy. Merriam Webster defines a garden apartment in American English as a multiple unit low-rise dwelling, having considerable lawn or garden space. The apartment buildings are often arranged around courtyards, that are open at one end. Such a garden apartment shares some characteristics of a townhouse. Each apartment has its own building entrance,

or shares that entrance via a staircase and lobby that adjoins other units immediately above and or below it. Unlike a townhouse, each apartment occupies only one level. Such garden apartment buildings are almost never more than three stories high, since they typically lack elevators. However, the first garden apartment buildings in New York, U.S., built in the early 1900s, were constructed five stories high. Some garden apartment buildings place a one-car garage under each apartment.

The interior grounds are often landscaped. In Chicago, a garden apartment refers to a basement apartment. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the use of garden flat in British English as a basement or ground full or flat, with a view of and access to a garden or lawn. Although its citations acknowledge that the reference to a garden may be illusory, Garden flat can serve simply as a euphemism for a basement. The large Georgian or Victorian townhouse was built with an excavated subterranean space around its front,

known as an area, often surrounded by cast iron railings. This lowest floor housed the kitchen, the main place of work for the servants, with a tradesman's entrance via the area stairs. This lower ground floor, another euphemism, has proven ideal for conversion to a self-contained garden flat. One American term for this arrangement is an English basement. When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of the owner's family member, the self-contained dwelling may be known.

as an in-law apartment, Annex, or Granny Flat. Though these sometimes illegally created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than the landlord's relative. In Canada, these are commonly located below the main house and are therefore basement suites. Another term is an accessory dwelling unit. which may be part of the main house or a freestanding structure in its grounds.

Salon apartment is a term linked to the exclusive apartments built as part of multifamily houses in Belgrade and in certain towns in Yugoslavia in the first decades of the 20th century. The structure of the apartments included centrally located anteroom with a combined function of the dining room, and one or more salon areas most of these apartments were built in belgrade serbia although with the first examples of apartments popularly named salon apartments with the concept of spatial and functional organization later spreading to other large urban centers in yugoslavia mazanette french for little house has no strict definition OED suggests a part of a residential building which is occupied separately, usually on more than one floor and having its own outside entrance. It differs from a flat and having usually more than one floor, with a staircase internal to the dwelling leading from the entrance floor to the upper,

or in some cases lower other floor. It is a very common arrangement and much post-war British housing, especially but not exclusively public housing, and serves both to reduce costs by reducing the amount of space given to access corridors, and to emulate the traditional two-story terrorist house, to which many of the residents had been accustomed. It also allows for apartments, even when they are accessed by a corridor, to have windows on both sides of the building. A mazenet could encompass tineside flats,

pairs of single-story flats within a two-story terrace. Their distinctive feature is their use of two separate front doors onto the street, each door leading to a single flat. Maisonet could also stretch to cottage flats, also known as four-and-a-block flats, a style of housing common in Scotland. The vast majority of apartments are on one level, hence flat. Some, however, have two stories joined internally by stairs,

just like many houses. One term for this is mazonette. Some housing in the United Kingdom, both public and private, was designed as scissors-section flats. On a grander level, penthouses may have more than one story to emphasize the idea of space and luxury. Two-story units in a new construction are sometimes referred to as townhouses in some countries, though not usually in Britain. Duplex refers to two separate units horizontally adjacent with a common demising wall or vertically adjacent

with a floor ceiling assembly. Duplex's description can be different depending on the part of the U.S., but generally has two to four dwellings with a door for each, and usually two front doors close together but separate. referred to as duplex, indicating the number of units, not the number of floors. As in some areas of the country, they are often only one story.

Groups of more than two units have corresponding names, triplex, etc. These buildings that have a third story are known as triplexes. In the United States, regional forese, forms have developed. In Milwaukee, a Polish flat or raised cottage, is a small house that has been lifted up to accommodate a basement floor housing, a separate apartment, then set down again, thus becoming a modest pair of dwellings. In the sun-belt, boxy small apartment buildings called dingbats, often with carports below, sprang up from the 1950s. In the United Kingdom, the term duplex is usually applied to an apartment with two stories,

with an internal staircase, neither of which is located at ground level. Such homes are frequently found in low-cost rental housing, in apartment blocks constructed by local authorities, or above street-level retail units, where they may be occupied by the occupier of the retail unit or rented out separately. Buildings containing two dwellings with a common vertical wall are known as semi-detached, or colloquially semis.

This form of construction is very common, and built as such rather than being a later conversion. This type of apartment developed in the U.S. during the middle of the 20th century. The term initially described a living space created within a former industrial building, usually 19th century. These large apartments found favor with artists and musicians, wanting accommodation in large cities, New York, for example.

and are related to unused buildings in the decaying parts of such cities being occupied illegally by people squatting these loft apartments were usually located in former high-rise warehouses and factories left vacant after town planning rules and economic conditions in the mid-twentieth century changed the resulting apartments created a new bohemian lifestyle and were arranged in a completely different way from most urban living spaces, often including workshops and art studio spaces. As the supply of old buildings of a suitable nature has dried up, developers have responded by constructing new buildings in the same aesthetic with varying degrees of success. An industrial warehouse or commercial space,

converted to an apartment is commonly called a loft, although some modern lofts are built by design. A penthouse is an apartment usually located on the top floor of a high-rise apartment building. This type of house has exclusive features like private elevators, landscape terraces, and high ceilings. In Russia, a communal apartment is a room with a shared kitchen and bath. A typical arrangement is a cluster of five or so room apartments, with a common kitchen and bathroom and separate front doors, occupying a floor in a pre-revolutionary mansion. Traditionally, a room is owned by the government

and assigned to a family on a semi-permanent basis. A service department is any size space for residential living that includes regular made and cleaning services provided by the rental agent. Service departments or serviced flats developed in the early part of the 20th century and were briefly fashionable in the 1920s and 30s. They are intended to combine the best of the best of the 20th century. to combine the best features of luxury and self-contained apartments, often being an adjunct of a hotel. Like guests semi-permanently installed in a luxury hotel, residents could enjoy the additional facilities

such as housekeeping, laundry, catering, and other services if and when desired. A feature of these apartment blocks was quite glamorous interior. with lavish bathrooms, but no kitchen or laundry spaces in each flat. This style of living became very fashionable, as many upper-class people found they could not afford as many live-in staff after the First World War, and reveled in a lock-up and leave lifestyle that service department hotels supplied.

Some buildings have been subsequently renovated, renovated with standard facilities in each apartment, but service department hotel complexes continue to be constructed. Recently, a number of hotels have supplemented their traditional business model with service department wings, creating privately owned areas within their buildings, either freehold or leasehold. Apartments may be available for rent furnished, with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant moves in with his own furniture. Service departments intended to be convenient for shorter stays include soft furnishings and kitchen utensils and made service.

Laundry facilities may reside in a common area accessible to all building tenants, or each apartment may have its own facilities. Depending on when the building was built and its design, utilities such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all the apartments or separate for each apartment and build separately for each tenant. Many areas in the U.S. have ruled it illegal

to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the premises. Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in apartments. Telephone service is optional and is almost always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities also cost extra. Parking spaces, air conditioning, and extra storage space may or may not be included with an apartment. rental leases often limit the maximum number of residents in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the apartment building,

a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location accessible to the public and thus to the mail carrier. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take the mail from the carrier and provide mail sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders, a buzzer, equivalent to a doorbell, may be available for each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings, such as two or three flats, or even floor flats, rubbish is often disposed of in trash containers, similar to those used at houses. In larger buildings, rubbish is often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster.

For cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessers will place restrictions on tenants, regarding smoking or keeping pets in an apartment. In more urban areas, apartments close to the downtown, British-English town, or city-center area have the benefits of proximity to jobs and or public transportation. However, prices per square foot are often much higher than in suburban areas. Moving up in size from studio flats are one-bedroom. apartments, which contain a bedroom enclosed from the other rooms of the apartment, usually by an internal door. This is followed by two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. Apartments with more than

three-bedrooms are rare. Small apartments often have only one entrance. Large apartments often have two entrances, perhaps a door in the front and another in the back, or from an underground or otherwise attached parking structure. Depending on the building design, the entrance doors may be connected directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such as a hallway or a lobby. In many American cities, the 1 plus 5 style of mid-rise, wood-framed apartments have gained significant popularity, following a 2009 revision to the International Building Code. These buildings typically feature four wood-framed floors above a concrete podium and are popular with the developers due to their high density and relatively low-concined.

construction cost. The Pueblan peoples of what is now the southwestern United States have constructed large multi-room dwellings, some comprising more than 900 rooms since the 10th century. In the classic period Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, apartments were not only the standard means of housing, the city's population of over 200,000 inhabitants, but show a remark even wealth distribution for the entire city, even by contemporary standards. Furthermore, the apartments were inhabited by the general populace as a whole, in contrast to other pre-modern societies, where apartments were limited to housing the lower-class members of the society, as with the somewhat contemporary Roman insulae.

In ancient Rome, the insuli, singe. singular insula, were large apartment buildings where the lower and middle classes of Romans dwelled. The floor at ground level was used for tabernet, shops, and businesses, with living space on the higher floors. Insuli in Rome and other imperial cities reached up to ten or more stories. Some was more than two hundred stairs. Several emperors, beginning with Augustus, attempted to establish limits of 20 to 25 meters for multi-story buildings. But met with only limited success. The lower floors were typically occupied by either shops or wealthy families,

while the upper stories were rented out to the lower classes. Surviving Oxirinkas papyri indicate that seven-story buildings even exist. in provincial towns, such as in the third century Hermopolis in Roman Egypt.