Rental towers in 1940s Chicago were advertised as being distinct from the "slums" or the city's "dirty backyard," pejorative terms used to describe the low-rise neighborhoods at their feet. Despite the glistening setting, it was only toward the middle of the 20th century that oceanfront or near-to-oceanfront rental apartments started springing up en masse in Miami. And in the San Francisco if 1850, when the city had only 25,000 residents, boarding houses were the rental housing of choice for the mostly male initial population. These facts and more in this city-by-city roundup of historical ads around the Curbed universe:
Atlanta · Boston · Cape Cod · Chicago · Detroit · Hamptons · Los Angeles · Miami · New York · Philadelphia · San Francisco · Toronto · Vancouver · Washington DC