I don’t know exactly how it was explained on the show - but I do know how it works now and in the 1990s and if Monica had lived in that apartment with grandma for a specified amount of time before grandma left permanently (due to death or otherwise), she could have kept the apartment and still been under rent control (or stabilization, depending on when grandma moved in and when the building was built).
There is another issue that I think has to be considered in the case of non-physical impossibility - and that is whether the viewers will find the situation plausible. I’ve seen lots of stuff on-line where people find certain things about TV shows and movies set in NY to be unbelievable. Interior windows, between two rooms in an apartment are one. More specifically , I’ve seen people who thought that Archie Bunker owning a house but not a car was unbelievable , and that a bathtub in the kitchen as shown in a Mad Men episode was implausible.
They definitely didn’t have one from the beginning - too many references to taking the subway, even to look at a house in the Bronx. Your link even says
While moonlighting, driving a taxi for Bert Munson, Archie is in a minor fender bender with a Jewish woman.
Here is Mary’s first apartment. It looks like the upper tier serves the entry door, balcony and closet, with the kitchen, living area et al about two steps down. It could, possibly, make sense if the dais corresponds to a vault over the dining room, which would then also be under the balony, with the kitchen under the downstage floor.
Thank you for that, but that drawing shows the entry door to Penny’s apartment is on the same wall as the left side of the stairwell. But if you look at this photo of the building lobby, you’ll see that the building entrance is about four feet to the left of that stairwell. So how does Penny’s apartment fit above that, if not by hanging out over the sidewalk and the street?
My house, built in 1959, has a sort of sunken living room. I think the house is technically “multi-level”, and there are little flights of stairs all over the place. But the living room is a couple steps down from the dining room, giving the living room a higher ceiling.
Architecturally, this is accomplished by different parts of the basement having different ceiling heights.
I think what you are describing is called a raised ranch, defined on this page from Apartment Therapy. They were common when I was growing up in Connecticut but I didn’t like that you were confronted by stairs immediately upon entering the house.
Around here they were called “split foyers.” Builders like to put them on sloping lots where part of the first level reaches high enough above ground level that it can have full-size windows. Here’s a pretty good look at one.
We had always called the home a split level. But the description of a Raised Ranch sounds more precise.
I see them often in neighborhoods from the 1960’s. The 2nd floor, ground level windows are very distinctive.
Our house had a single level garage. Our lot sloped slightly across the front. It also had a dramatic slope ftom front to back. It was a workout to mow.
My aunt’s family lived in what we called a split level house, on a nearly flat lot. It was four or five steps up to the front porch which entered the landing that led up to the main floor or down to the basement (IIRC, it was 8 steps up, 5 down). Upstairs was finished when they moved in, downstairs was not. You could enter the back at ground level, which came in handy when Granddad died and they were able to finish an apartment for Grandma downstairs.
Speaking of Bob Newhart’s apartment, I noticed in at least one episode, where Emily is giving a friend the obligatory tour, that it appears to have a circular path. While that doesn’t sound absolutely unfeasible, I’ve never actually seen that in an apartment of any kind.
I lived in a genuine split-level. The front door and the first level were at ground-level. The front door opened into our den. The second level was five steps up, and had the living room/dining/kitchen area. Five steps above that, and directly above the first level, was the third level.
The Brady Bunch supposedly lived in a house like that, although, as in many TV shows, the floor plan on the inside didn’t quite match the exterior layout.
