Letitia Keller distinctly remembers the advantages of living in a modern high-rise apartment near O’Hare International Airport a number of years ago.
In addition to a host of amenities including a first-rate health club and brightly lighted laundry facilities, the apartment itself featured central air conditioning, a modern vanity and tile floor in the bathroom, and new appliances, cabinets and an abundance of counter space in the kitchen.
But ask Keller whether she prefers living in a modern building or in a vintage apartment, and she’ll give a strong nod to the latter. Even though the kitchen in her current vintage apartment is smaller with older appliances and less counter space, Keller’s next apartment will most definitely be of the older variety.
“I wouldn’t even consider living in a newer building again,” Keller says adamantly. “Modern buildings are, on the whole, ugly as can be and do not aesthetically appeal to me. They’re built in such a way so that the windows are smaller, and everything looks more cramped and crowded, almost boxlike. Newer apartments just don’t look very homey.”
More for the money?
Keller currently lives in a spacious, vintage four-story East Rogers Park studio apartment complete with built-in bookshelves and cabinets, and distinctive ceiling and wall moldings. There is also a space in the apartment for Keller’s file cabinets and papers, a space in which one of the old-style Murphy beds used to be.
“I really feel that I get more for the money, in terms of square footage and a sense of space,” Keller says. “The ceilings are very high, and I don’t feel like I’m living in a box, which is easy to feel when you’re living in a studio apartment.”
Indeed, many folks in search of the perfect apartment often voice a strong preference either for a vintage apartment with all its homey nooks and crannies or for a modern steel and glass building complete with doorman, laundry facilities and modern kitchen appliances.
Interior designer Diana Henry, who provides services to residential clients throughout the Chicago area, notices that men and women, particularly newly divorced people moving from the suburbs to the city, have their own unique reasons for preferring either modern or vintage apartments.
“Single men tend to prefer the modern apartments,” Henry says.
“A large number of my male clients are men in their 40s who are moving from the traditional colonial-style house in the suburbs with furniture that their wives picked out, and when they divorce, they also want to divorce themselves from that style of living,” he says. “So they think of themselves as wanting a new lifestyle: having modern and contemporary furniture to reflect the new vision that they have of themselves. They want clean, uncluttered surroundings.”
On the other hand, newly divorced women who are moving from that homey suburban residence into the city want “something warm and cozy because they want the softness and charm of something that’s familiar. They don’t feel the same kind of need to escape,” adds Henry.
Personality search
Property manager Mary Rowley of River Forest-based Pilgrim Management notes that apartment seekers in the Oak Park-River Forest area who prefer older buildings “like the personality that an older building has, as well as the spaciousness. People like the little nooks, moldings and cabinets, as well as those types of things that give it a personality: the wooden floors, the placement of the windows and the fact that there seem to be more windows and hence more light coming in.”
People who prefer newer buildings, says Rowley, choose them because the floors are usually carpeted and because of the laundry and storage rooms that are on the premises. Newer buildings in the Oak Park-River Forest area that Rowley shows to apartment seekers are more likely to have modern vanities and sliding glass doors in the bathrooms, more counter space and perhaps a built-in microwave in the kitchen, and laundry and storage rooms on the premises.
You may be convinced that living in an older building is the only way to go, but what about those ugly radiators in every room, the tiny kitchens, and the smaller-sized bathrooms that seem more commonplace in vintage apartments?
Radiators, says Henry, can be concealed with decorative radiator covers or made into window seats. A variety of companies specialize in decorative metal covers or wooden radiator covers that can be used to create a cozy nook and an effective seating area.
When it comes to the smaller-sized kitchens that are more likely to be found in vintage apartments, Henry says that using appropriate colors and lighting can help make a smaller kitchen appear larger. “I tend to prefer to use the color white by using white on white wallpaper or having white floors and white ceilings,” Henry says.
“As for lighting,” she continues, “my preferred lighting to make a smaller kitchen appear larger is an acrylic box with rounded corners that’s surface-mounted in the ceiling and contains a minimum of two and a maximum of four fluorescent tubes. That gives the effect of an entirely lit ceiling that’s floating as opposed to spotlights. The more spotlighting you do, the choppier the look of the space. Track lights are good for highlighting artwork, but they don’t enlarge the visual size of a space the way the acrylic box does.”
Designing tricks
To help make a smaller bathroom appear larger, Henry says that “you want to be sure that everything coordinates in color. For example, the walls should be as close as possible to the colors of the sink, the lavatory and the tub, and the towels and accessories shouldn’t be a large number of different colors. The more colors you place in a room, the busier it looks; the more monochromatic a room is, the larger it will look.”
To help dramatize the intricate woodwork or moldings that are found on the ceilings of many older apartments, Henry suggests painting the woodwork or moldings in an enamel white paint and then painting the area below in a contrasting color. “You’re then drawing a line around the height of the ceiling and raising the eye level up to make the room look larger.”
When furnishing apartments in newer buildings, Henry offers the following suggestions: Because newer apartments are more likely to have horizontal or panoramic windows as opposed to the vertical windows that are so common in vintage apartments, it’s better to use monochromatic color schemes, rather than a variety of colors and patterns, in rooms where you’re trying to draw attention to beautiful vistas.
The texture, color and pattern of certain fabrics can make a modern apartment more homey and inviting. Cotton prints, for example, are warm and cozy for sofas. “Cozy” colors include reds, yellows and pinks, while white is stark and cold. Anything in blue, from baby blue to navy blue, gives a colder look.
To help detract from the boxy feeling of many newer apartments, a unique floor plan design can be utilized. For instance, you can place at least one piece of furniture in the room at an angle, and run an area rug on an angle up to a corner in order to emphasize a particular view.
