One subtle feature of London’s architecture you might not notice until your third or fourth visit to the city is… the sheer number of bricked up windows. Once you know to look for them, they’re EVERYWHERE. But why?
Because King William III enacted a tax on windows in 1696. Windows were expensive back then, so the theory was the tax would get most its revenue from the wealthy, since they had the most windows.
Except EVERYONE started gaming the system immediately. In some places, the tax was tiered, so you paid x tax on 1-6 windows, more on 7-12 windows, etc. A homeowner with 7 windows thus only needed to brick up 1 window to drop into the lower bracket.
And of course the poor inadvertently felt the brunt of the law. Many “apartment buildings” were houses converted into apartments. For tax purposes, they were considered one dwelling. So landlords would brick up all the windows on the first floor, where the cheapest rents were, or would brick up windows of tenants they just didn’t like.
The TRULY wealthy steered into the skid. Although Derbyshire’s Hardwick Hall predates the window tax by 100 years, its striking use of windows flips a finger at the taxman and shows the world who could REALLY afford to live large:
