In 60 BC a political alliance was formed in Rome, called the First Triumvirate, formed by Pompey, Julius Caesar and Crasus . The first two contributed their prestige earned on the battlefield and Crassus contributed... being the richest man in Rome . Among the multiple businesses in which Crassus embarked, there were legal, illegal and miserable ones, such as doing business with the frequent fires in the city. Crassus created a private fire department that, logically, came to put out the fires but, and here is the deal, they only intervened when the owners of the affected properties agreed to sell their property to Crassus. Of course, at a ridiculous price. Faced with the dilemma of being left with nothing or accepting a few sesterces and being able to recover part of their assets, they signed the sale. The firefighters put out the fire and Crassus acquired land to build new islands and become the largest real estate developer in Rome. He was even thought that he too had a corps of arsonists.
During the Republic and the Empire, the large urban centers with high population density gave rise to the development of vertical construction:the islands . They were blocks of flats —usually rented— with several floors, occupied by citizens who could not afford to have a domus , the type of dwellings of families of a certain economic level. Usually this type of construction had four floors:stores on the ground floor were opened and the upper ones were used for apartments of various sizes for rent. In addition to the size of the houses, the height also influenced the price. The top floor was always the cheapest, since the chances of surviving, in the face of the frequent fires that broke out in Rome, were much lower than those of those who lived on the first floor. Following this theory, the former paid much more.
These islands were built by private developers, such as Crassus, and, like any self-respecting business, what they sought was to increase profitability. It was enough to apply a simple rule:if I build taller buildings, it will mean building more houses, charging more rent and increasing profits with the same land. So they decided to go up to 7 heights and even some daring made them 8. The problem was that they continued to be built with the same materials:wood and adobe (unfired brick dried in the sun), very weak materials that could not withstand great heights. Now, to the usual problems of the fires, the collapses were added. To solve the subsidence, laws were passed that made it necessary to build the islands with fired brick, and to avoid fires it was decided that there should be a certain space between two islands to prevent the spread of fires.
But Crassus didn't care about all these stockings, he had already speculated enough to be the richest man in Rome. He died in Carrhae looking for glory.