An Apartment house (n.) is like a beehive where every cell complains about the buzzing.
An Apartment house (n.) is a building where every neighbor owns one heavy dresser they move at midnight.
An Apartment house (n.) is privacy stacked until you know your neighbor's schedule by footfall.
An Apartment house (n.) teaches you a stranger's schedule by sound without ever teaching you his name
The Barracks (n.) is like a boarding school with live ammunition.
The Barracks (n.) makes brothers out of strangers by giving them the same sergeant to hate.
Barracks (n.) is housing that teaches you to sleep beside people you may die with.
Barracks (n.) is a room built so that no one in it is ever alone with a second thought.
Bathhouse (n.) is a babel: grunting weightlifters, the smack of the masseur, and the hair-plucker shrieking for custom, silent only while he makes his client shriek.
A Bathhouse (n.) is like a church with the sermon replaced by steam.
A Bathhouse (n.) charges admission to sit in a stranger's sweat.
A Bathhouse (n.) issues everyone the same towel, which is the whole social contract.