{"id":11806,"date":"2020-01-14T06:38:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T11:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.renthop.com\/content-manager\/?p=11806"},"modified":"2023-07-22T11:36:38","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T15:36:38","slug":"what-are-two-up-two-down-apartments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.renthop.com\/blog\/what-are-two-up-two-down-apartments\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are Two-Up Two-Down Apartments?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Like the Manhattan Classic Six<\/a>, there is a particular floorplan jargon that is extremely common in pre-war London. It’s called the Two-Up, Two-Down row house. It refers to having no neighbors above and below you, but almost always neighbors on your two sides. If you are lucky enough to have the end unit, meaning you are the last apartment on the block, you might only have one neighbor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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What Makes Two Up Two Down So Special?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The interior floorplan is almost always identical. There are two rooms downstairs (living room and kitchen), and two rooms upstairs (both bedrooms). The most classic layout would only have these four rooms, and each room spans the entire width of the apartment. And while the layout seems simple, there is a brilliant engineering reason behind it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Shared Chimney<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The heating efficiency is one of the biggest benefits to Two-Up Two-Down apartments. London winters are cold, and in the pre-war days maintaining ample heating was a common problem. The chimney and fireplaces became essential heating conduits, but to carve a chimney for each unit would drastically reduce the number of parcels per lot and block. However, as you can see from the layout below, row houses can be lined up so that four fireplaces all share one massive chimney!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That’s why in the photo above, you can see four separate spigots in each chimney. One from the living room fireplace, one from the dining room, and then another two from your neighbor who has a mirror image of your floorplan!<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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