Definition
A portion of a house or building occupied by one person or household while the remainder is occupied by others. In legal usage, the term encompasses any self-contained residential unit forming part of a larger structure, including a suite of rooms held under a single occupancy. It does not require a formal lease; the critical characteristic is shared-building occupancy with distinct possession.
The term appears most frequently in three legal contexts: (1) landlord-tenant law, where it defines the physical premises subject to a tenancy and governs questions of access, habitability, and quiet enjoyment; (2) burglary and criminal trespass law, where it determines whether a particular space qualifies as a "dwelling" or "building" for purposes of the offense; and (3) electoral and franchise law in older American and English sources, where proof of occupying an "apartment" could establish residence sufficient to qualify a voter.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A complete domicile occupying only part of a building, especially one for rent; a flat. Also, a suite of rooms within a domicile designated for a specific person, or more generally any room within a house.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A room in a building; a division in a house separated from others by partitions. Also a set or suite of rooms; a compartment (obsolete).
The legal meaning has tracked the common meaning more closely than most legal terms, but one gap is historically significant: legal sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries treated "apartment" as applying to any separately occupied portion of a building—including a single room—without requiring the self-contained, multi-room character that modern common usage implies. A researcher applying today's intuitive sense of "apartment" to older legal materials may underestimate the breadth of the term as used in those sources.
Common Confusion
APARTMENT vs. DWELLING vs. TENEMENT: These terms overlap substantially in landlord-tenant and criminal law but are not interchangeable. "Dwelling" emphasizes habitation and is the operative term in most modern burglary statutes. "Tenement" historically denoted any held property (real or personal) and in older sources often referred to a multi-unit building or a particular class of urban rental housing, not the individual unit. "Apartment" in historical legal usage focused on the fact of divided occupancy within a single structure, not on the quality or completeness of the unit.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's legal weight has shifted substantially across time and jurisdiction, creating traps for the unwary researcher.
Burglary and criminal law: The most consequential historical use of "apartment" is in defining the breaking-and-entering element of burglary. Whether a separately occupied portion of a shared house qualifies as a distinct "dwelling house" for burglary purposes—or whether entry into a co-occupant's rooms constitutes burglary at all—turned directly on how courts understood "apartment." Cases cited in Black's and Black's 2nd (including People v. St. Clair and McMillan v. Solomon) address precisely this question. Researchers tracing the evolution of burglary doctrine should treat "apartment" as a doctrinal term, not merely a descriptive one.
Electoral qualification: Bouvier's entry preserves an important English franchise context: a person holding only an apartment in a shared house, with a key to the outer door but no landlord in residence, could qualify as an occupier for voting purposes. This usage has no modern American counterpart but appears in historical election-law disputes and treatises, including Woodfall on Landlord and Tenant.
Breadth in historical sources: Burrill is notably broader than the other dictionaries, explicitly including a single room within the definition and noting that "apartments" can mean one or more rooms occupied by one or more persons distinct from other occupants of the same house. Burrill also introduces an outlying usage—a small detached building on the same lot as a dwelling—that the other sources do not address. Researchers should not assume a consistent definition across historical authorities.
Modern statutory usage: Contemporary residential landlord-tenant statutes, housing codes, and zoning ordinances typically define "apartment" or "dwelling unit" with precision. These statutory definitions control in their respective contexts and may differ meaningfully from the common-law baseline in historical sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries converge on a core definition—a portion of a house occupied separately while the remainder is occupied by others—but diverge in emphasis and scope.
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Bouvier's are essentially identical on the core definition and cite overlapping case authority. Bouvier's adds the English electoral qualification context, which Black's omits. Burrill's is the most expansive, explicitly defining apartments as "one or more rooms in a house, occupied by one or more persons, distinct from other occupants," and unusually extending the term to potentially cover a small outbuilding on the same lot—a usage unsupported by the other sources and likely reflecting an outlying case or local legal tradition. Anderson's Dictionary offers no independent definition, cross-referencing only Burglary and House, confirming that the term's legal significance lay primarily in those doctrinal contexts.
What historical sources collectively miss: None of the source dictionaries address the regulatory and statutory elaborations that now dominate practical use of the term—zoning classifications, housing codes, habitability standards, and rent regulation. Researchers working in any of these areas must consult modern statutory sources rather than relying on the historical dictionary baseline.
Jurisdictional Note
American and English historical usage of "apartment" is broadly consistent, but the electoral-qualification context is primarily English and has no direct American parallel. In modern American practice, the term's definition in any given context is usually supplied by a specific statute or code (zoning, housing, landlord-tenant), and these vary by state and municipality. Criminal law definitions—particularly what counts as a "dwelling" for burglary purposes—continue to generate case law and differ across jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Landlord and Tenant; Burglary; Dwelling House.