Ah but a dorm room has a window requirement and indoor plumbing. Doesn't sound like much but it is.
A New York tenement at its worst has windows on the front and back face only, which are the main room of the appartments since they're the only one to get any light. The building covers the maximum buildable surface of the lot. It is rather narrow and very long. The bedrooms are in the middle of the building with no windows. You don't need light. There's no bathrooms in the building, you use a latrine in the back of the lot.
Most of them got renovated to at least have internal windows, a sink (and therefore plumbing) in the kitchen and toilets on every floor after the code was improved.
Later you got the Dumbbell tenements with windows to the outside in every bed room and, often, an actual bathroom. They've often been renovated to be quite nice today but originally it was about minimizing cost and maximizing rent revenue extraction from the working poor.
My current apartment has similar a railroad layout from your picture. I absolutely love it. I keep the "parlor" area neat and clean (which is where front door is). When I have people over, they usually don't come further then that.
Like the monarchs of old, the deeper I allow you in my residence, the more I favor you. From the parlor, a door leads to the kitchen. Most people don't have business there, so I can leave dishes in the sink and what not. And behind kitchen, a door leads into the holiest of holiest, the bedroom. You're a lucky devil if you made it all this way, nudge nudge.
My apartment before this had a more contemporary layout, was even a little bigger, with open kitchen-living room, bedroom/bathroom organized around central hallway. It kind of stunk. Everything sort of was the same, it was difficult to compartmentalize, so when I ended up cleaning I ended up doing the entire thing. There was no progression, no differences in "formality", so the entire thing gave itself away the moment you walked in.
It must be fiendishly hard to design commodious living spaces within a small square footage, but I've become a fan of those shotgun layouts, it works well IMO!
Funnily, the Montreal take on the railroad apartments usually has a narrow hallway going to the Kitchen which is the deepest room.
The bathroom will be "in the kitchen" often as a closet with only a bathtub and toilet, no sink. It's not uncommon for the kitchen sink to be on the same wall as the bathroom and this is the only place with plumbing in the flat (a retrofit, same with electricity and gas.)
Living room will often be right before the kitchen and a "double room" with a large archway separating the two. Meanwhile the front room will often also be a pair of double rooms and normally they're bedrooms with a curtain for privacy or a built up wall.
Usually you only see this layout in older rental units where "renovated" is code for replacing the 1950s gas furnace with baseboard heaters halving heating costs, painting and 100 amp electrical service with breakers instead of 15-30 amp service with a fusebox (my brother's old place had only two 15 amps fuses for the whole apartment. If the fridge's compressor kicked in while the microwave was cooking, pop!)
A New York tenement at its worst has windows on the front and back face only, which are the main room of the appartments since they're the only one to get any light. The building covers the maximum buildable surface of the lot. It is rather narrow and very long. The bedrooms are in the middle of the building with no windows. You don't need light. There's no bathrooms in the building, you use a latrine in the back of the lot.
Most of them got renovated to at least have internal windows, a sink (and therefore plumbing) in the kitchen and toilets on every floor after the code was improved.
Here's a sample floor plan that's representative of early tenements: https://www.nygeo.org/tenement.jpg
Later you got the Dumbbell tenements with windows to the outside in every bed room and, often, an actual bathroom. They've often been renovated to be quite nice today but originally it was about minimizing cost and maximizing rent revenue extraction from the working poor.