In the following passage, there are blanks each of which has been numbered.…
2026
In the following passage, there are blanks each of which has been numbered. These correspond to the question numbers; against each question, five words have been suggested, one of which fills the blank appropriately.
The Sam Kee Building, located at 8 West Pender Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is (____1______) the "shallowest commercial building in the world", according to the Guinness Book of Records. The Sam Kee Company—one of the wealthiest firms in Chinatown— purchased a standard-sized lot in 1903. In 1912, however, Vancouver widened Pender Street and expropriated 24 feet (7.3 m) of the above-ground (____2______) —effectively (or so it was first believed) making conventional commercial use of the remaining frontage impractical, if not impossible. Refusing the neighbors offer to (____3_____), Sam Kee decided to build anyway. In 1913, the architects Brown and Gillam designed this narrow, steel-framed building's ground-floor depth (from storefront to rear of building) to measure 4'11" (1.50 m), with a second-floor depth (from overhanging bay window to rear) of 6' (1.83 m). The basement (_____4____) sidewalk and originally housed public baths, while the ground floor was used for offices and shops and the (_____5_____) for living quarters.
Choose the correct answer from the given options to fill the blanks which are numbered 4
- A.
Lake nearby
- B.
Top storey
- C.
Upper class in
- D.
Road besides
Attempted by 132 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Answer: Top storey
Why this fits: The sentence states that the ground floor was used for offices and shops and the _____ for living quarters. "Top storey" (meaning the upper floor) naturally fills this blank because it denotes the part of the building that would serve as living quarters.
Lake nearby — does not make sense grammatically in the sentence and does not refer to a building area for living.
Upper class in — ungrammatical and meaningless in this context; it cannot denote living quarters.
Road besides — ungrammatical here and does not indicate a part of the building used for living.
Note: The passage also mentions the basement in relation to the sidewalk, which would require wording such as "below the sidewalk," but among the given choices only "Top storey" appropriately fills the blank referring to living quarters.