Three-decker (house)

This article is about the apartment building. For the type of sailing warship, see Three-decker. For the book format, see Three-volume novel. For other uses, see Three-decker (disambiguation).
Three decker apartment building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, built in 1916

A three-decker, triple-decker triplex or stacked triplex,[1] in the United States, is a three-story (triplex) apartment building. These buildings are typically of light-framed, wood construction, where each floor usually consists of a single apartment, and frequently, originally, extended families lived in two, or all three floors. Both stand-alone and semi-detached versions are common.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tens of thousands of three-deckers were constructed, mostly in New England, as a cheap means of housing the thousands of newly arrived immigrant workers who filled the factories of the area. The economics of the three-decker are simple: the cost of the land, basement and roof are spread among three or six apartments, which typically have identical floor plans.[2] The three-decker apartment house was seen as an alternative to the row-housing built in other cities of Northeastern United States during this period, such as in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

Three deckers often account for a disproportionate number of structure fires.[3]

  1. ^ "Triplex: Stacked".
  2. ^ This Old House: The Jamaica Plain House
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference TurkenWGBH was invoked but never defined (see the help page).