Small Windows at the Top of Brownstone?
Hi, What are those small windows in the at the very top of some four floor brownstones? Is that another floor with tiny windows? Is it an attic with windows? Our four story doesn’t have those windows and the five stories I see have full size windows on the fifth level. Thanks,
Hi,
What are those small windows in the at the very top of some four floor brownstones? Is that another floor with tiny windows? Is it an attic with windows? Our four story doesn’t have those windows and the five stories I see have full size windows on the fifth level.
Thanks,
“I wonder what that looks like on the inside if someone is renting an “upper duplex.””
I’ve been in only one brownstone with those small windows in the cornice and with the sloped roof. The attic floor was very usable, but looked bad, aesthetically. It felt like an attic because of the sloped ceiling, low ceiling near the walls, and small windows. Usable, but sub-standard.
And if you’re tall, you couldn’t stand near the window.
I have a “hidden” 4th floor. Small window in the front and normal size (but low) in the back of the house.
Pictures…
Back: http://www.flickr.com/photos/castleandkeep/297760999/in/set-72157594378041657/
Front: http://www.flickr.com/photos/castleandkeep/297749283/in/set-72157594378041657/
Yes, ours is a brownstone. There’s a lot of very useable space — if that’s what you’re asking — in our attic room. In addition to a large desk, a lateral file, 2 tall and 4 short bookcases, we also have a pull-out sofabed. The room is about 18 ft deep so, like I said above, it really depends on how much full-height space you have before the slope begins.
Thanks for all the info.
I am talking about a brownstone.
I wonder what that looks like on the inside if someone is renting an “upper duplex.”
Our NeoGrec house (built around 1878) has these windows on the top floor, as Minard describes. The front room on that floor has a standard height ceiling for about 3 feet, then it dramatically slopes down to the “eyebrow” windows. There’s a fairly skylight too. These sloping attic rooms are found in both 3 (or 4, if you count the attic) and 4 storey houses. I have heard them called “cheaters” — the idea being to reduce the property tax assessment by obscuring the top floor. Infact, our house is recorded as a 3-storey, not 4, by the city.
I’ve also been in houses of the same era as ours with the same sloping attic room in front but no eyebrow windows concealed in the cornice. Just skylights.
We use our room as a home office — the light is great but there’s no temptation to stare out the window!
I think what you are describing are the windows of the attic story in pitched-roof row houses (usually Greek Revival period, pretty rare after the 1850s, so usually not brownstones, per se). Usually these buildings did not have dormer windows, hence the attic windows to provide (some)light and air to what was generally the servants’ quarters. Often these houses were later raised up to a full top story with a flat roof, which is why some row houses have them and some don’t. Some row houses around the Civil War period (early in the brownstone period) have lunette type windows set into the cornice, which were also for the top story.
They are attic windows and provide light and air to the attic story. Earlier houses have dormer windows that accomplish the same thing. The central portion of the attic generally has enough headroom to be habitable.
Depending upon which style rowhouse it is, these windows are often in top stories where the roof is actually a sloped roof, with a ridge about a third of the way back from the front facade, and the roof sloping towards the front and back from that ridge. The areas with those windows often have sloped ceilings right under the roof framing, kind of like an attic, and the low point can sometimes be as low as 5 or 6 feet above the floor.