The living room is now the most important room in the apartment; it has to be used for so many different activities. In the newest houses architects have contrived to make living rooms bigger, with more light, without increasing the Overall size of the apartment. Very few apartments, even at the most socially acceptable addresses, have separate dining rooms. The dining room is an ell, or a jut, off the living room.
Clean, smooth interior lines make the room look more spacious and are generally easier on the eyes. Archways, door and window frames are severely plain, instead of being encrusted with heavy mouldings. A new type of radiator that isn't much bigger than a shoe box is built into inconspicuous casings. Windows are much bigger, and let in floods of light.
One change that is regretted keenly by many is the passing of the real fireplace. People love a wood fire no matter how efficient the steam heating system. Most of the new apartments do not have fireplaces that work. These cost much money to install and are no longer needed for warmth. In some of the new also to the Royal Marines and all sections manned by the RN.R. and RON.V.R, including armed merchantmen, mine-sweepers, trawlers, and drifters. The most urgent needs are (1) sea-boot stockings (2) pullovers, (3) scarves, and (4) helmets.
The Royal Air Force Comforts Organization, whose staff of voluntary helpers are working at the R.A.F. headquarters at Berkeley House, London, appeal to women in all parts of the Empire to help by sending warm clothing for men of the Air Force.
Their arduous task, both at the front and on reconnaissance work at home, it is pointed out, imposes on them most rigorous weather conditions. It is impossible at present to keep pace with the tremendous demand for oversocks, which can be knitted in any sort of strong wool. houses the maddening compromise is the property hearth, where no fire can ever burn. Tenants equip it with an imitation fire of black glass coals lit by a feverish, unwarm glow of a red electric light. Justifying the false fireplace the other day, one agent said: "I tell you, lady, it's not half the headache of a real fireplace."
Bathrooms with windows are getting scarcer, on the theory that window space is much too valuable to use up in a bathroom. The ven-filation problem is solved by an air duct that has a grille a foot wide set in the bathroom wall. Modern bathrooms are luxurious, lined with pearly tile in pastel tints and gleaming with chromium fixtures.
Builders apparently dearly love the gadget, and the newest houses are full of these final selling points: built-in curtain rods, narrow strips of metal with slits for hooks already
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.