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VERTICAL The New housToN John Daugherty, Realtors Presents johndaugherty.com Established 1967 moved away to form separate tribes. Insulae were ancient Rome's housing for the working and poorer classes. Constructed of brick, insulae sometimes reached, often precariously, to nine stories and blocked the sun in the city's poorer quarters. Most insulae had running water and sanitation on the first floors, but higher floors did not, forcing those residents to avail themselves of public fountains and latrines. Clearly, lower floors were more desirable in those days — and fetched higher rents. Gaius Julius Caesar, first emperor of Rome, grew up in an insulae. The Julians were patricians, but Caesar's immediate family was, if not poor, certainly not wealthy. Young Caesar's exposure to the jostling crowds and polyglot of languages spoken on the common streets undoubtedly gave him a tougher shell and wider view of the world than the average Roman boy of his class. Between 600 and 900 years ago, cliff dwellers in the American Southwest created their own version of high-rise living. They carved multilevel dwellings into the sheer rock faces of cliffs throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and northern Mexico. One of the most famous of these, the erroneously named Montezuma's Castle near Casa Verde, Arizona, comprises five stories and 20 rooms, and was built over the course of three centuries. In roughly the same period in China, the tulou or "clan houses" of rural Fujian province appeared. The tulou towered four floors and had up to hundreds of rooms that opened out onto a vast central courtyard, like the Colosseum. For centuries, each Pictured: The penthouse at The Four Seasons Hotel, a John Daugherty, Realtors listing. This residence enjoys all of the amenities the hotel offers and the spectacular golden view shown in the photograph at left. The Four Seasons was one of the first Houston hotels to offer residences. building housed an entire clan, virtually a village. Everyone living inside had the same surname, except for those who had married into the clan. The last tulou were built sometime in the 20th century. Some are still occupied, but as Chinese society changes, the number of residents is dwindling. Some of the most bizarre dwellings of antiquity are the mud "skyscrapers" of Shibam in central Yemen, often called the "Manhattan of the Desert." Located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the town was once a stopping point for traders traveling along the frankincense and spice routes. Shibam's skyscrapers were built on a hill in the 1530s after a flood destroyed much of the existing town. The 500 buildings, ranging from five to 11 stories, require constant reinforcement with fresh layers of mud but are the tallest such structures in the world. A pair of technological innovations developed in the 18th and 19th centuries in France made possible the extreme height of multistory construction that we take for granted today. In 1743, King Louis XV had a "Flying Chair" installed on the balcony of his palace at Versailles to link his apartments with those of his mistress on the floor above. The device was raised and lowered Have you noticed? Houston is becoming a city of sky dwellers. More and more of us, drawn by the new urban zeitgeist, are trading traditional housing for the skyline views, luxury, security, and freedom of high-rise living. Towering residential buildings soar above the rooftops of homes and retail centers — and more are on the way. Think 'vertical, vertical, vertical' when thinking of Houston's future. Vertical living may have captured Houston's attention relatively recently, but multistory dwellings are older than history. The Book of Genesis relates the story of the Tower of Babel, built by the generation after the Great Flood. The erection of that vainglorious structure displeased God, who sewed disruption by causing the people, who spoke one language, to suddenly speak in different tongues. Confusion reigned, and work on the tower ceased as different language groups banded together and A ChANgiNg skyliNe: upTowN, DowNTowN, AND All ArouND ® Continued on Back Cover Montezuma Castle National Monument Cliffs of Arizona Tower of Babel, Illustration by Andreas Szielenkiewicz