What does the phrase "Giving On" mean?

Question:I'm stuck on a passage in Saul Bellow's "The Victim". The passage reads:

"It was shortly before sundown, and there were lights in the flats giving on the airshaft where the walls, for a short distance below the black cornice, were reddened by the sky."

I figured out "airshaft" wasn't what I originally thought it meant. It's a form of architecture similar to a courtyard. But I still have no idea how something "gives on"

Answers:
It just means that the the flats (apartments) were arranged round the airshaft. The windows 'giving on' to the airshaft would only let in a very little light, and one could only actually see the changing light on the wall opposite.

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