I can gaze at floor plans, deck plans, aircraft seating layouts, and railroad car plans for hours. I can envision a room from a one-dimensional rendering and improve on the architect's plan, decide I want the drawing room with the marginally larger bathroom, pick my seat to London or LAX based on a number of factors including restroom and galley location and the all-important FEBO, and pine for the days of the QE2 and FRANCE and UNITED STATES when all the cabins were different and not - as they are now - essentially the same. So what's with floorplans? They describe a space, one that always shelters and somethimes moves us. They detail a part of how we live and how we travel. They reflect more about us than we sometimes know - a study of 1950's "white brick" apartment buildings in New York City details how similar they were, at least in terms of layout and size, to public housing of the same era. Park Avenue wasn't that ... Read >

I can gaze at floor plans, deck plans, aircraft seating layouts, and railroad car plans for hours. I can envision a room from a one-dimensional rendering and improve on the architect's plan, decide I want the drawing room with the marginally larger bathroom, pick my seat to London or LAX based on a number of factors including restroom and galley location and the all-important FEBO, and pine for the days of the QE2 and FRANCE and UNITED STATES when all the cabins were different and not - as they are now - essentially the same. So what's with floorplans? They describe a space, one that always shelters and somethimes moves us. They detail a part of how we live and how we travel. They reflect more about us than we sometimes know - a study of 1950's "white brick" apartment buildings in New York City details how similar they were, at least in terms of layout and size, to public housing of the same era. Park Avenue wasn't that far from the Bronx, at least in terms of what we called home. Floor plans can also highlight the paradoxes of American life, such as the story of Paul Williams, the architect who almost single-handedly brought the "Hollywood Regency" style of the 30's and 40's into being for Southern California's elite, despite the fact that as an African-American he couldn't live in the homes he designed. Similarly some of New York City's greatest apartment buildings - the San Remo, the Beresford, 740 Park, and 1040 Fifth - were designed by immigrants; the first two by a Hungarian Jew, Emery Roth, the latter by the son of a Sicilian plaster, Rosario Candela. Just as Louis B. Mayer's MGM helped define America to Americans on film during the 30's and 40's, Roth and Candela came to define luxury living in Manhattan during the same era. In addition to a large - and ever-expanding - collection of ephemera, I'm fortunate to have access to the physical collections of several large American universities. My most recent and lately almost all-consuming resource is the online archive of Columbia University's Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, in particular the New York Real Estate Brochure Collection. The collection, consiting of over 9000 items, can be accessed at http://nyre.cul.columbia.edu/ Am I alone in this obsession? I have collected and enjoyed floorplans since I was 10 or 12. There's no professional component: I've never seriously considered architecture or design as a career and don't know a chimney flue from a gutter pipe. While there's a certain thrill to seeing how, say, Brooke Astor lived, I've no desire to emulate that life or lifestyle. Help me understand this compulsion. Show Less <