Named The Follies by the architect, this lot is known by everyone in town as "The Yard".
I've been looking into the old "back-to-back" housing that is often still to be found in historic cities, particularly in the North of England, generally in the larger industrial cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool. There are still a few houses of this type, often preserved by museums. But many people still living lived and worked, brought up their families, in similar homes (some in fact MUCH smaller than these houses.)
It is a more or less triangular block of six back-to-back houses, not built literally back-to-back, but with one small central "yard" which has access to the shared toilets and washroom.
The beautiful world seen behind is Manu's Smokey Town from The Sims Daily Forum.
The communal washroom or laundry room would contain the only water supply for the whole set of houses. Of course, your Sims can do whatever renovations you like; telephones, washing machines, even bathtubs could be installed! One or two of the houses here have bathtubs but the Sims assure me they are filled by hand!
These houses don't have cellars as they were built very cheaply to rent to the workers at the nearby factory. And that said, they were in most cases far preferable to the alternatives.
Each house does have its own fireplace or stove for heating; it can get very cold in these overcast Northern industrial cities.
The way into the backyard or "ginnel".
The house shown here is rather long and narrow.
This is a lot that could be played at any period from the early Victorian era onward; with suitable Custom Content they could show their historical state pretty exactly. It can also be a lot of fun to do them up as modern-occupation homes.
The houses are "blind" which in the Victorian architects' usage means they do not have windows at the back, or toward the toilet-block. This was because, as you may imagine, the yard could become quite insanitary.
One of the latest tenants sculpted a penguin from the hedge.
There are some plants and trees in a couple of gardens around the houses. I've tried to only plant the plants that would normally grow in the North of England. Likewise, there are spawners for Frogs and Toads in the pond.
NOTE: These houses are NOT apartments. If you need to keep some Sims out of some other Sims' rooms, use the "Lock" option on the doors, or a hack that enables named Sims to use certain doors. If you want to set them up as apartments, it's up to you, but as each house has only one door, it should not be too difficult.
This building was made with ALL EPs and SPs for The Sims 3 installed, and no Store or Custom Content, and playtested.
Rooftop view.
Lot size 42 x 30 (or of course would easily fit on a larger lot)
Bear in mind that if you turn the lot to re-position it, the game may well place duplicates of the spawners. To get rid of the extra spawners, go into BuyDebug (Testingcheatsenabled true, then Buydebug On) and remove them. Then save your game and exit. On reloading you should only have the spawners you want.
Cost to buy (shared between several families!) §92,678
Sita March 23, 2017