The Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest are famous for their
apartment-house villages. This pueblo in Taos, New Mexico, has been
lived in for nearly 300 years.
One house on top of another
Houses piled on top of one another—so high they seem to reach the sky.
Where are they? In almost every city. They are called high-rise
apartments.
A city is a place where thousands—and sometimes millions—of people
live and work. In a crowded city, there isn’t enough land for every
family to have its own house. Apartment houses—buildings with the
houses one on top of another—are the only answer.
Apartment houses called high-rises may be 50 or more stories high. One
invention—the elevator—made these tall apartment houses possible. If
it were not for the elevator, apartment houses or office buildings could
be only a few stories high.
In the Southwestern United States, there are apartment buildings that
are hundreds of years old. They are called pueblos—a Spanish word
meaning a people or community. Some of the early pueblos were as many as
five stories high. They were built so that the roofs of the lower rooms
were porches for the rooms above.
The first pueblos were built up for protection, not to save land. The
only way to get into a pueblo was up a ladder and through a hole in the
roof. When an enemy was near, the Indians pulled up the ladders.
