2-913-958 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Victoria-Street, Westminster, 1854. New housing in London: '...to enable families of all sizes to have apartments suited to their number, and each self-contained and distinct; a system of arrangement common to Paris and most other Continental cities, and which is known in Edinburgh and Glasgow, as the system of "flats"...In one house all the apartments are heated by hot water, dispensing with the use of open fires, with their necessary cost, and dirt, as well as the labour of attendance. Throughout the whole the cooking is done by an apparatus heated by gas, which is found admirably to answer every culinary purpose...curious will it be to see these lines of palatial mansions stretching across what was, a few years since, the most benighted part of the metropolis, both as respects its godliness and cleanliness'. Architect: Henry Ashton. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.