History Of The Penthouse
Long before the arrival of the elevator, rooftops, lofts and attics were leftover real estate and reserved for the serving classes. The roofs of the city were the playgrounds and workspaces of servants, with laundry houses and washing lines between water towers and chimneypots.
The word Penthouse stems from the Middle English pentis (with roots in the latin appendre, which means “to cause to be suspended” and this term was initially applied to the shed-like structures appended to existing buildings.
Gradually, the word penthouse evolved into the description of the rooftop housing for a stair or a lift shaft, before it was finally meant to describe the very top floor of an apartment building.
With the event of the elevator, the long climb to the top floor was gone and hight started to mean prestige. Tall buildings had become status symbols and turned into the living space for the urban elite and to inhabit a Penthouse space was to be at the very summit of the city.
Height was just as important in working life. Captains of industry would demand their place in the sky to look as they were “on top of everything” and boardrooms and executive offices had to be on the very top floor.
Quickly it became a race to build the biggest and best penthouses in the cities and the super rich replaced their mansions with apartment blocks and penthouses.
