Whether you call them garden apartments, English basements or the less glamorous-but often more fitting-basement apartments, those who live in them often develop a love-hate relationship with their sublevel homes.
Defined in Webster`s Dictionary as ”a multiple-unit low-rise dwelling having considerable lawn or garden space,” a garden apartment in the Chicago area is more likely to be a converted service area such as a boiler or laundry room, according to Richard Johnson, vice president of Standard Securities & Management Corp., a Chicago realty company.
Only the more exclusive-and expensive-three-story walkups, like those in Old Town and Lincoln Park, have traditional garden apartments that look out into courtyards with elaborate gardens or well-manicured lawns enclosed by tall, vine-covered brick walls. In other parts of the city and in older suburbs, the converted basement unit is more common.
”A lot of older buildings built in the 1920s had full basements underneath the whole structure. There was a time when there was a need for that extra space,” says Johnson. ”Eventually, apartments became equipped with modern facilities, like washers and dryers located in apartments themselves. Basically, basement service areas became dead space. (Building owners) realized, 50 or 60 years ago, that for a few thousand dollars they could sneak another apartment or two in these areas.”
How they rate as living quarters is a matter of opinion.
”Ninety-nine times out of 100, basement apartments are converted storage and boiler rooms, occupied by live-in janitors,” says Milton Zale, owner of Elaine Place, a block of three- and four-story walkup apartment buildings in Lake View. ”They are not attractive options.”
Johnson agrees. ”They are not exactly choice. For example, most of the walkup buildings have radiators in the ceilings of the garden apartments. They are very unattractive. It doesn`t make good logical sense either, because heat rises. But that`s how heating systems were designed when these buildings were built. The boiler had to be lower than the lowest radiator. It`s a real turnoff to most people, however.”
Bargain-basement rents
But therein lies the attraction for renters: To compensate for the unattractive features of these apartments, property managers and owners usually ask lower rents, anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent less than the rent charged in similar units on other floors, according to Johnson. ”Many times the (basement) apartments are identical in layout, room size and everything to the ones above them. You get the same product in living space for less rent.”
Sometimes you even get more for less, says Misha, 28, who lives in a 12-step walk-down garden apartment in a three-story building on the North Side. Misha (who asked that her last name not be used) has been in her apartment for four years. ”On the floors above me, there are six studios, three on each level,” she says. ”Studio tenants pay one dollar or more per square foot for less space, whereas I pay less than a dollar (per square foot) for a 1,000-square-foot area that includes two bedrooms, two fireplaces and a toilet and shower with a separate powder room.”
Charlotte Prince, the residential manager of the Granville, a 17-story apartment building at 6230 N. Kenmore Ave. in Edgewater, says price is the No. 1 selling point of the basement apartment. ”A one-bedroom apartment on floors 2 through 17 here costs $455 a month, as opposed to the garden apartment, which cost $425 a month,” she says.
On safe ground
Garden apartment dwellers often are also people who like to keep their feet on the ground, or, in their home, slightly below it. Take Tom Honeywell, 28, who lives in a basement apartment off an alley in Lincoln Park.
A set of keys hangs on a nail in the wall between two barred windows in his one-bedroom apartment.
”I really don`t mind the bars, or the alley. I feel safe here,” he says. ”The keys are there for a different reason. They are handy in case of fire.
”When I was a little kid, in second grade, we had a fire in our house. My father spent several months in the hospital as a result. I spent three weeks in an air tent. That is why I live on the ground floor,” he says.
”When I first moved downtown I lived with a friend in a 13th-floor apartment in Printer`s Row. One night I heard a car alarm and thought it was a fire alarm. After that experience, well, since then, I haven`t been above the second floor.”
Honeywell, an independent representative in medical sales, says he lives an extremely transient life. He feels the location of his apartment suits his lifestyle perfectly. His bedroom passes as an office 24 hours a day and is full of boxes of medical supplies, which he is grateful not to have to lug up and down stairs. ”This is not a home,” he says. ”I haven`t done much in the way of decor. It`s an office and music,” he adds, indicating his stereo system and a wall lined with compact disks.
Garden apartments are havens for some disabled people and for the elderly, for whom easy access is vital, says Johnson. ”They don`t have to walk up to the third floor with two bags of groceries, for one thing. It`s easier to walk down two steps than to walk up 20. Garden apartments allow people who are less mobile to get around and help prevent them from becoming housebound.”
Pat Kralik, the residential manager of the Arbor Club rental community in Crest Hill, agrees. She oversees one of the few complexes in the far suburbs that have garden apartments. ”The Arbor has 17 three-story walkup buildings, with 227 garden apartments. Although most of our garden residents are either divorced or are students, about one-third are elderly,” she says. ”It`s a convenient lifestyle for them.”
Although garden or basement apartments have their good points, they are not all sunshine and light. In fact, according to Prince, many are cold, dark and damp. ”They are good places to grow mushrooms,” quips Honeywell, who actually likes the fact that he can`t tell night from day when he`s at home.
”Because of my job I keep crazy hours,” he says. ”So, if I want to sleep at 2 o`clock in the afternoon, I don`t have to worry about the sun in my eyes.”
Misha says that she gets sufficient natural light from a large patio door off her living room. But the smaller bedroom in her apartment has no windows at all. ”I once had a roommate, an artist, who painted a window on the wall of that bedroom. The window had flowers on the sill and big fluffy clouds through it`s view. She even hung real curtains,” she laughs.
Johnson says that the stereotype of the cold, damp garden apartment is a fallacy in many cases. ”The old buildings housing garden apartments have heating systems that are more than adequate. You might even want to open a window or two,” he says.
Hitting bottom
The loudest and most persistent complaint about basement or garden apartments is that if a building has a plumbing or flooding problem, the garden apartment will get it first, according to Johnson.
Honeywell can attest to that. ”A year ago, November, at about 3 a.m., a loud crash jolted me out of bed. The ceiling in the hallway leading to the bathroom had collapsed. All the plaster fell in. The bathtub was full of it,” he says. ”They had to dig into the ground six feet and lay new plumbing pipe. It was a mess. They said that in a building as old as this one, it was bound to happen 10 years sooner or 10 years later. Well, it happened sooner,” he says.
Honeywell says he won`t let the fact that the ceiling missed his head by three feet stop him from renewing his lease in May. He says he would rather be dodging plaster and getting his feet wet than living on higher ground.
Security should be a concern for garden apartment dwellers, says Prince. Yet many garden tenants don`t appear overly concerned: ”When I first moved here four years ago, I was concerned,” says Misha. ”But not now. I have never had any problems with break-ins. I tend to compensate by taking precautions, like putting bars in the windows and extra locks on the door, which is thick steel and glass to begin with.”
Although Prince says there are more cons than pros to garden apartments and that she has a difficult time renting them, Johnson finds that they are very popular-mainly because of their lower rents. ”I think we are 100 percent occupied with our garden apartments, which is better than the average overall,” he says.
Garden tenants seem to like them for better or for worse, sacrificing light, dryness, security and the occasional open window for location and value.
”I`ve found that no one person fits the garden apartment profile,” says Kralik. ”There is no rhyme or reason to it.”
