ABSTRACT
We have already emphasized that specialization of function of individual building structures has been the key-note of the structural development of the modern urban organism. Such specialization has always been characteristic of the public building—the church, castle, royal residence, municipal building. But, until the early 19th century, even in the greatest cities, virtually all the buildings were dwellings, and the merchant reserved in his home space for storage in the loft or in the cellar or in outhouses, while the craftsman reserved space for his workshop and the shopkeeper had his premises in the ground floor of his house. Even in the case of the mills and tanneries that were sited near the river front, the craftsman lived on the premises or nearby. The functions were gradually specialized in the largest cities in the spreading urban area at the end of the 18th century, and in the majority of cities after the advent of the railway in the middle of the 19th.
