3 Weird Quirks of My American House

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It turns out my new American house was built in 1942. As such, it has one or two quirks.
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[@LostinthePond]

A couple of addendums (because I made this video on little sleep in between moving. Don't recommend). 1. Upon further inspection, the phone nook probably wasn't a phone nook, but a door chime unit. Phone nooks were usually smaller than this, apparently. 2. We suspect the coal chute predates our house and may have once been a sidewalk coal chute. These were occasionally used in the nineteenth century and looked liked sewer lids, as opposed to a typical coal chute built on the side of the building.

[@mykopg]

I wondered about the nook, which would have been great for the phone, too. We had a similar one with chimes in it for the front door, which was opposite. My Dad had our house built with a GI loan in the late 40's, after the War.

[@ginnyjollykidd]

I was going to say the same thing: our coal chute was on the side of our house like a big cast-iron "cat door" that didn't swing inward.

[@alexjasonmohr]

Yes! I owned a house built in 1939 at one point, with an incredibly similar niche, with the original door bell chimes still intact. I think I even saw your wiring box / concealment up top in one shot. Might be worth restoring that; they sound lovely! Keep up the good work!

[@youropionmattersnot]

We had working Coal chute in NW Ohio in the 70s. Coal furnace. It was horrid. Delivery day would leave coal dust on everything upstairs.

[@glowormrdr6183]

I'm glad you said this because that niche looked SO familiar...when I was a kid in the '60's we visited family whose old "adobe" style house (I LOVE those) had that niche with long tubular bells. 'Amazing door chimes - it was buried in my memory. And this was in the hills near Los Angeles.

[@Scotter4536]

I'm convinced that Laurence purchased this house more for content than living quarters.

[@ZealotPewPewPew]

Lost in the Pond: tax write-offs!

[@Capohanf1]

That way he can write off the purchase price on his Income Tax as a Business Expense!

[@kellymoses8566]

Why not both?

[@heathermichael3987]

😄😁😆 same thought . I still like him . I’m ok with that.

[@annmc8392]

😄

[@27dcx]

You got the "fancy" version of the basement toilet. Often they were just in the middle of the basement with no walls around them! They were also installed as a relief valve of sorts so that if the sewer backed up it would come out of the toilet in the basement, saving the main floor from becoming a sewage mess.

[@kfoster3616]

exactly. I grew up in an old farm house and my dad removed it. It sat there all alone....no doors....not used.

[@vaopr1012]

His basement shower was probably removed when the basement was finished off, but the basement showers were typically just attached to the exterior wall (two knobs and a shower head) with a three inch high brick or cement wall around the floor area for the shower draining into the sump pump and a shower curtain if it was fancy.

[@stellaz2595]

My basement toilet has backed up - twice. It was a fountain, and I had 2' of water down there. What a mess.

[@kfoster3616]

@@vaopr1012 indeed. Later on, many had a cheap aluminum shower stall to enclose with a curtain closure. They were tall and narrow like the old telephone booths. I remember our next door neighbor adding this in their basement to enclose the shower area..

[@jimwilcox2964]

1905 ish house. Yep, sits between corner shower and sink. Washer and dryer on otjer side of the shower. Furnace across in other corner. Rooms about 12x12 with no door. Connected to the coal room with the metal outside coal door which i would replace with a window but in historic district, so no.

[@wunderkind-7724]

Because of the war, almost no homes were built in 1942. You have a rare item.

[@davidyoung5114]

Construction on the house was probably started prior to the attack on Pearl Harbour, and completed in 1942.

[@wunderkind-7724]

@@davidyoung5114 You're most likely correct. The builder most likely got the building permit in 1941 and finished it within the spring of 1942. Most small houses take three to five months to build. My father was a home and apartment house builder throughout his career, so I am well aware of these things

[@Junzar56]

@@davidyoung5114 that’s what I was thinking!

[@tomfrazier1103]

A house here in Makaha I've worked on was built in the Wartime. It looks made of scavenged components from elsewhere. In the Dec. 7th attack, defective or unset fuses on AA shells meant that some exploded, wrecking cars and buildings, causing most of the "Around 60" civilian deaths. The storefront commercials remained as empty lots until 1946. As they had upstairs family quarters, some people had to hustle to find homes. Building, among other civilian activities were tightly controlled by the Army & Navy. Formal OPA type rationing was not in effect here, it was simply de facto. Alchohol was severely restricted to "5 Islands Dry Gin" a pretty nasty product, I'm told. Servicemen, in addition to locals didn't like Primo, the leading local brew. I'm not sure about it's rival, Royal lager. As a bottle digger I find a lot of West Coast brews 1880-1945. Buffalo of Sacramento seems to have been big c1900. Rainier was brewed here 1905-20. Our 1900 era streetcars were closed in 1940. All those old streetcars became instant housing on bases, hotbunking. The all-out Win the War mentality that Democrats sometimes want to reimpose to achieve "Policy goals".

[@Junzar56]

Could the phone niche have a crank wall phone?

[@Woj90]

That particular nook you showed at 3:45 was actually for the doorbell chimes. You still have a doorbell in there up at the top, but it's a slightly more modern one where the bell is small and entirely contained inside. I'm lucky in that my house which, coincidentally was also built in 1942, still has the original chimes. They sound so much nicer than their modern equivalent. They look cool too!

[@sjo1122]

I have seen this in other houses as well. Actual long bells that would intone a newcomer

[@nancys4874]

In our house it was both. The door chimes hung from the top, and the black bakelite phone sat on the shelf.

[@therewillbecatswithgwenhwyfar]

@@nancys4874 now I have to Google because now I really wanna see all of your telephone/doorbell niches.

[@shermano2153]

Were they building houses in 1942?

[@elizabethwillis885]

My house is from 48 and in our hallway, on one wall is the doorbell chimes still intact and on the opposite wall is the phone niche.

[@elizabethhyland5188]

The niche in your hallway is meant for a long chime doorbell or tubular doorbell. The wiring is still being used as that is where the replaced doorbell is. If you take the cover off you will see 2 xylophone type bells. You might even have another doorbell button by your back door. Two rings for the front and one for the back, wired into the same device.

[@loistverberg900]

Yes, you are right. It's more likely a door chime cubby than a phone cubby. I have a phone cubby and its two feet tall. the house I grew up in had chimes in a cubby, like Lawrence's.

[@five-toedslothbear4051]

Yep! Had one of those in the house that I used to own, with a big four tube door chime. We did in fact have a phone niche, but it was in the kitchen, by the kitchen table.

[@bobp4036]

First thing I thought of as well. My grandparents had the big doorbell chimes like that in their house from 1910. Looked like there was a small box at the top that could have been a modern doorbell.

[@Woj90]

Yep! I'm lucky that my house (coincidentally also built in '42) still has the original chimes and they are so much nicer to look at and listen to than a modern doorbell.

[@HariSeldon913]

I think it looks better as a cat niche.

[@joeybla9nkenship332]

I guarantee you the CURVED-END cabinet with the pink countertop in the laundry room used to be the original countertop and cabinets from the kitchen. My grandmother had a curved-end unit exactly like that in her kitchen. She displayed ceramic chickens and roosters on the half-circle shelves.

[@gemoftheocean]

Aunt of mine had some like that.

[@carolthedabbler2105]

We had them too -- used the shelves for storing a few small appliances and a week's worth of newspapers.

[@jdb47games]

'roosters', haha! Americans are shy about using the proper word.

[@mescko]

@@jdb47games The 'proper' word has come to mean something *very* different here.

[@lizsays3324]

In America a rooster is a rooster. What does shy have to do with it? Do you call a rooster something else? Interesting.

[@kathyastrom1315]

In the late ‘90s, I had a third-floor studio apartment in a storefront building that was built in the early 1900s. When I moved in, I couldn’t figure out what the purpose was of the second (permanently-locked) door from the main hallway into the apartment. That door, which was several inches narrower than the standard door, was just to the right of the functional entry door and it would have opened into the kitchen, or to be more precise, where the refrigerator was. It took me several weeks to realize that that door was perfectly situated for an old-fashioned icebox to get its regular delivery of a block of ice! The iceman would have had to walk up the two flights of stairs with the block of ice, opened that narrow door, then opened the back of the icebox and placed the ice inside.

[@jamesburton1050]

Cool! Pun intended, haha!

[@janicesullivan8942]

My old house in Chicago had one of those, and a sleeping porch for the summer.

[@wunderkind-7724]

Back in 1990, I bought a house and renovated its kitchen. The house was built in 1923. When I ripped up the flooring to the rear door of the kitchen leading to the outside, I found a drain they went out under this outdoor staircase. Clearly it was for an ice box.

[@markballard9942]

I grew up in an 1890s row house in Hyde Park on the Southside. Instead of a little niche for the phone, we had a closet under the staircase with a small table and a bench to sit on where you could talk privately. Almost like an in-home phone booth.

[@edscmidt5193]

Was the table and chair connected to the wall or a seperate piece of furniture ie gossip chair

[@markballard9942]

@@edscmidt5193 the phone was hardwired to the wall, but it was sitting on a small occasional table with a small stool or bench next to it. Not built into the wall.

[@edscmidt5193]

@@markballard9942 it was probably a gossip bench, look them up they are pretty cool

[@watchdog8058]

that sounds awesome! probably a great hiding place for hide and seek games

[@markballard9942]

@watchdog8058 You have put your finger on something interesting. At the base of the stairs was a boot closet. My brother's and I found that by climbing into the boot closet and climbing over the back board. We could get into a small space at the base of the stairs that no one could see. It was also not accessible from the phone closet. Totally "secret."

[@lanaj1107]

I grew up in a large home built in 1903. It featured a large concrete water cistern in the basement! My father somehow cut through the very thick concrete wall and installed electricity and shelves. We used it as a canning room and storage for root vegetables.

[@elultimo102]

You have a ready-made fallout shelter ! (You may soon need it).

[@tonyathomas9540]

Lucky you!

[@Stache987]

A cistern and a water tank to hold final rinse water from the wash, and bathtub drainage can be used to fill the toilet tank and water usage outside... especially helpful where water rates are higb... just a little pump and it's done then when no saved water is available, normal water does the job.. But Laurence (spell correct keeps changing it) 40 minutes on the toilet... do you have a constipation issue?

[@theproplady]

My Dad used ours as a room to store firewood for our wood furnace.

[@lanaj1107]

@@Stache987 I believe our cistern was used to collect rainwater from the roof at one time. I imagine the water was used for washing etc. and had to be filtered and boiled before use? I wish I had payed more attention, but I was only 8 at the time but I remember my father talking at length about it. I was terrified of it and did everything I could not to have to get pickles, onions, potatoes etc. 😂

[@xarcadyd6053]

That two basin basement sink was the laundry facility before the washer and dryer became everyday household items. I can’t tell from the short glimpse we got of it, but if it is made of stone, it is likely soapstone and is therefore a “feature” that some might want to preserve.

[@bigscarysteve]

I was forced by financial circumstances to sell my grandparents' home to a house flipper. There was a soapstone laundry tub in the basement. I knew I would be sickened by the tour I got of the house after the flipper had finished his handiwork, but the laundry tub having been removed was one of the worst blows.

[@jeffjay9350]

I have to disagree. I grew up in a home built in 1962. We had one of those lead sinks. Indestructible.

[@marleneflanagan7137]

We had one in the Chicago two flat I grew up in.

[@susanbender2953]

I remember we called them "sanitary tubs". I was in chicago.

[@amystreasuresdesign]

Looks like soapstone, we had one in our basement in our apartment building in Chicago.

[@quikwit1]

Apparently they had the telephone niche in Britain as well. I’m sure you have seen episodes of keeping up appearances where Hyacinth always ran out to the hall to answer the phone and admire her Royal Daulton figurine she displayed there.

[@rosehagood3146]

And to indignantly assure the caller that they had not reached a Chinese takeaway.

[@chriswitmer9754]

"Bouquet" Residence!, Lady of The House Speaking... The only reason I know about that show is for some reason at midnight on the kid's/youth channel where I'm from would show Are you Being Served? , Keeping up Appearances, and then Yes Minister. During Summer Break when I was allowed to stay up late, I would be playing in the basement rec-room and not bother to change the channel because one - there was nothing else on, and two - I actually found the shows kind of funny (Yes Minister was kind of dull, I think it required knowledge of local British Politics which I did not have at the time).

[@CarringtonHollister]

I got that video on my KZbin channel when Hyacinth was talking on the phone lol

[@richardcoughlin8931]

Maison Laurence brings back a lot of memories. From the ages of 0 to 8 years I lived in a house that was built in the 1920s. It had a coal chute and furnace that was an endless source of fascination and illicit fun. I remember opening the small furnace door to inspect the red hot coals and sneaking into basement to toss in small objects to watch them burn (aren’t all small children pyromaniacs?). From age 9 to 12 we lived in another house that had fuel oil delivered about once a month. A tanker truck backed into driveway and a long hose was unspooled to pump oil into a large tank located in the basement. Not as interesting as the coal furnace but still a source of entertainment for a pre-teen boy. Since then every house I have lived in is heated by natural gas, which is essentially invisible and boring - unless there is a gas leak that threatens to blow up the house or the entire neighborhood.

[@jonc4403]

My house was built in 1920, the coal furnace is long gone, the chute sealed. I replaced the natural gas furnace with a heat pump.

[@richardcoughlin8931]

@@jonc4403 Heat pumps and solar panels are the wave of the future in most parts of the country.

[@MoonbeamGardener]

I thought it was a 30s/40s house based on the woodwork and some of the other details. Older houses like yours are usually built really solid. Edit: As another commenter pointed out, your washer and dryer are elevated, you might want to watch and see how much water your basement typically takes on. If you've got a sump pump/basement drainage system, you may want to make sure that your pump is in good working order before you put too many items on the basement floor.

[@catherinesanchez1185]

If it's got a sump pump, I'd replace it now. Compared to having a flood in your basement (which is NOT covered by homeowners insurance ) , it's a small price to pay. You don't know how much it's had to run before they moved in . |Considering the snow they get there , probably a good amount. Peace of mind!!

[@MoonbeamGardener]

@@catherinesanchez1185 You're probably right. I want to think that the last time I replaced a sump pump, the new one only came with a one year warranty. The one before it only lasted a few years.

[@KatjeKat86]

@@catherinesanchez1185 This is why if I ever buy another house, I will never buy one that needs a sump pump; grow up in one that did, it was awful.

[@johnfritz1164]

My grandmother’s 1941 house did not have a sump just a floor drain. She later changed that floor drain to a standpipe higher than the top of the laundry tubs so when the sewer backed up it had to fill the laundry tubs before overflowing to the floor.

[@bluegreenglue6565]

@@johnfritz1164 : o

[@michaelflower6172]

My grandmother on my fathers side of the family had a house in Parma, Ohio which also had a Coal Chute, yet where the coal was poured into was a fairly large bunker which was later made into a Storm Cellar. You might want to consider getting the plans to your house from your city and/or county planning office to actually see just how big it might actually be. And whether or not it could actually be utilized as an additional room if it actually exists...

[@SteveLebeau]

Are you sure that is a coal chute? We called that a catch basin. Our coal chute was a metal door on the side of the house. Love your channel and congrats on the house!

[@ElCid48]

I was raised in a "mill" house that was build in the 1920's for families of workers who work in mills and we had a small iron door in the back of the house put in the chimney and it was for coal since most of the houses were heated with coal. we used it as a pretend oven when we played house outside growing up. our house was the house that most of kids in the lane played in. the backyard had no grass and we would make towns in the dirt and my friends lincoln logs.

[@antoinettecintron8808]

Yes the coal chutes are on the side of the house and emptied into a small room. Our house is built in the 1920’s and had a chute. Also had a laundry chute best invention ever… all houses should have yhem

[@DavidS5118]

Growing up the old coal shoot was our escape hatch from parental control. We eventually got smart enough to really clean it out and line with cardboard so we did not escape covered in soot. You may also have an old milk shoot where the milk man left your fresh bottles of milk but most of those are covered up or removed.

[@trishrowland7782]

Our milkman just left the milk inside the back door on our closed in back porch.

[@ConservativeVeteran]

Our milkman left our milk by the side door.

[@lisapop5219]

I just finished my comment on the milk door and came to see what others were thinking of.

[@kenc2257]

In the 1950s, our mailman left milk on the porch (he could also deliver eggs, I think).

[@timo4938]

The milk deliveries I remember as a child usually got left in my mother's bedroom. Odd....

[@cassieberringer7427]

My parent's really liked the idea behind what you just described regarding the basement set-up in Pittsburgh. When my parents designed their house to be built, they made sure to include a full bathroom in the basement (toilet, sink, & shower) so that they could do that very thing. But they also designed it so that the house sat on top of the two garages and the back door of the house goes through the garage and through the basement BEFORE entering the house. My mom loves yard work, so this way she could get all dirty and then get clean in the basement (including using the laundry area) before heading upstairs to the main part of the house. They built their house in 1995.

[@AsbestosMuffins]

my house has a tiny shower shoved in the basement corner that was the guy's mud shower because he was always out fishing and hunting

[@mgratk]

The house I grew up in, in PA, had a coal chute, coal bin the size of a small full bathroom, and a coal furnace that was used into the 80s. It was pretty exciting as a kid to stand in the basement and watch the coal slide down from the truck into the bin. My neighbor had a shower in the basement. Valuable for people who do dirty jobs.

[@kokomo9764]

Like shoveling coal into a furnace?

[@hopefletcher7420]

Hey, I just left a message about visiting Nanticoke every summer in the 50s.

[@pinecone2455]

Also Baltimore rowhouses had basement coal storage and chutes into the 1960’s. Our did. It was fun to see the coal truck shoot that nasty stuff down through the window.

[@Wrang15]

I am in PA we still burn coal where I am. The coal trucks still deliver the same way.

[@Wrang15]

My grandfather house in PA has the same set up. But no door and it's next to the sink. Up the road was a coal mine he worked at. Basement was a walk out.

[@lalida6432]

I lived in a 1950s house in the ‘70s. There were some unique things. We had a small toilet in the basement too but with a sink. Which was funny, because the basement wasn’t finished. We also had a laundry chute built into the wall that led to the basement. The clothes would come out near the hot water heater and we had to put a chair with a laundry basket underneath it. It wasn’t even near the laundry room. So we had to carry the clothes to the laundry room. We also had a milk door by the back door, but at that point, it was painted over and outside, at some point, aluminum siding was added so you couldn’t see it anymore. But you could see it from the inside. There was also a very old pencil sharpener near the kitchen as well as a cutting board built into the kitchen counter.

[@jeannamcgregor9967]

I think what you are calling a phone niche is actually a spot to place the door chimes, a doorbell setup using long brass cylinders hanging in that tall niche. A box at the top connected to the electric doorbell and little hammers would hit the chimes. Phone niches tended to be only about a foot tall.

[@carschmn]

Could also be for a cross

[@tomhalla426]

My Grandparents house, built in the 1920’s, has a phone niche that size. It was in the hall.

[@JamieStuff]

You have it exactly right. In fact, if you look, the current doorbell is mounted at the top.

[@cee8mee]

I came here looking for this clarifying comment. We had both a tall arched niche for the doorbell chimes, a shorter arched niche in the foyer for a table top phone, a short flat arched niche in the upstairs hallway for a wall mounted phone and another in the kitchen for a wall phone. Our house is post war just barely built by the farmer that sold the land to the developer. No coal chute or little door for fridge ice, but we had a root cellar and 3 attic storage spaces, unfinished wood flooring in all 3. The previous owners were serious about storage.

[@kenc2257]

Those would be some SERIOUS door chimes if they were the sole occupant of that niche; then again, some lovely door chimes would be better sounding that the typical "doorbell."

[@TheRealDrJoey]

Very nice woodwork in your American house, Laurence. I grew up in a late-1930s vintage house in suburban Detroit. The house had a coal chute on the side of the front porch that led to a 'coal bin,' a separate room off the basement. My dad got up at ungodly hours to shovel coal into the furnace. One of the greatest thrills of my life, as about a 4 year-old, was looking out the front windows and seeing a huge dump truck back up onto the front lawn to put coal down the chute for winter. We also had a single toilet in the basement, nowhere near as nice as yours, which my mother always called the 'lavatory.' Also in the basement was the basket that held the dirty clothes to be laundered, that had been put down the 'clothes chute'--and there were beautifully crafted little access doors to the chute on the first and second floors, By the laundry area we had these two sinks, side-by-side, and heavy-duty to the point of being industrial, which Mother called the 'stationary tubs.' In the SE corner of the basement was a little 8X8 room that was the fruit cellar. On the first floor, the place also had a bell-shaped cut-out in the wall between the kitchen and dining room, which served as our phone niche, although my mother called it the phone alcove. And speaking of chutes the place of course had a 'milk chute' where the local dairy, Johnson's, would deliver milk and eggs, etc. I've been living in Southern California for 45 years now, and hadn't thought about that place in years. They don't make them like that anymore. Do they still put vestibules in houses? That place had a kinda nice one, now that I think about it, with a big closet for heavy winter coats. And how many houses are built today with a sunroom AND a 'breakfast room?' That place had both. This was not anything more than a typical middle class suburban home back then. Growing up I just took it for granted, and never gave it much thought, but your coal chute really jogged my memory.

[@omegadubois6619]

When I was a teenager we lived in an awesome late Victorian house. It had so many original features, long gone from many houses these days. The main bathroom had a free standing, massive clawfoot bathtub. I had never seen a tub that big in real life before. So many things about that place absolutely thrilled me, I've always adored history, antiques etc. When I discovered the Dairy Doors, as my grandmother called them, it felt like Christmas morning to me. At the end of the counter, about a foot from the actual door, was another small door. It opened to reveal a tiny, tiled "room", and yet another door that could be opened to give access to the outside. I was so delighted and excited to discover this, that my grandma watched me like I was an escapee from an asylum for a few days lol. She told my dad to keep an eye on me when I discover the dumbwaiter or the coal chute.

[@emmyt9304]

We had coal miners all over where I live in Illinois and our house (built in 1947) also has an outside door leading to the basement, lone toilet with a utility sink at one end and there was a tub at the other end that we removed. All of this out in the open, no walls, no door. We cracked up laughing the first time we toured the house and walked down the interior basement stairs to see a toilet just at the bottom all exposed and in it's glory!

[@DelGuy03]

I saw a few houses like that in Bloomington Indiana too. When I was an undergrad at IU, students who moved out of the dorms might rent a whole house for the group, and in a couple of cases the basements, if they hadn't been remodeled, had just what Laurence described -- a tiny room with just a toilet, and a shower out in the open with no thought of privacy.

[@Maggies87]

My grandparents’ basement in MN had a toilet and shower by the laundry tubs. Both had shower curtains around them hung on pipes above, for privacy.

[@bigscarysteve]

That's a very familiar sight in the Pittsburgh area, too.

[@reginakeith8187]

At our old house in southern Illinois (big coal mining area) our basement also had a basement toilet (though ours had a sink and some privacy) but the weirdest part was that, at the bottom of the stairs was the only shower in the house, so we all had to use it. It had no wall or curtain, it was just a shower head that stuck out of a water pipe on the ceiling. It was out in the open in the middle of the space. You just had to hope nobody came downstairs when you were showering.

[@jeffwagg]

Howdy - I also live in Chicago, and that's not a coal chute, but a drain clean out for the gutters. For years, Chicago had a separate sewage system for storm water. That cover is for a cistern where sediment will collect. It needs to be cleaned every so often, unless your house has had its pipes diverted. In mine, running the washing machine would flood the basement until I learned about these things. The coal chute would have been in the side of the house.

[@GoingGreenMom]

Just a side note, you can get a lid for the back of the toilet that has a sink and runs off the toilet inlet so you don't have to run plumbing.

[@elultimo102]

Do you mean the toilet with a built-in sink, like the stainless steel ones in prisons?

[@robine916]

@@elultimo102 These are popular in Japan (the ceramic ones, not the metal prison ones! LOL!)

[@pvtbuddie]

And for the coldness of the water, soap up using a minimum splash, or, if you can find one, a battery operated foaming soap warmer, rinse as quickly as you thoroughly can, then use an alcohol based sanitizer before you dry off.

[@pvtbuddie]

@@elultimo102 : You can buy the lid separately, and they also come in ceramic and in white plastic.

[@edwarddickson7731]

Yep . Saves water as well. After you wash your hands, the water drains into the tank and is reused for the next toilet flush.

[@michaelcoffey7362]

Cool, The house I grew up in in the 1980's was built in 1932, it had the basement toilet, coal shoot and phone niche in the hall way, we had a working 1930's phone in it. Good memories .🥰

[@clevelander5797]

Coal chutes were pretty common from that time. We used our coal room as a cellar for canned vegetables from the garden.

[@herbcraven7146]

Our coal chute was eventually outfitted with a filler pipe for the oil tank that powered the furnace during the years we lived in our old house.

[@pjschmid2251]

I remember there was one in the house in Chicago I lived in and I was a little kid. My dad had converted the coal storage bin into a dark room. And my first apartment in Chicago had a sealed up door behind the refrigerator that used to be for ice delivery. When I first moved in I pointed it out to my parents saying I have this weird little door behind the refrigerator and my mom and dad took a look at it and they’re like oh yeah that was for ice delivery back in the day; good heavens.

[@Carol-uw5et]

I think the phone niche in the hallway was for the door chimes-homes had brass chimes (usually 2) hanging that would be mechanically struck when the door bell was pressed. My grandparents had them. A phone niche usually isn’t that tall. The coal chute could’ve been a dry well or cistern back in the day.

[@gemoftheocean]

@@pjschmid2251 cool. I never would have guessed.

[@suesimpson309]

As a child I lived in a house in PA that had a toilet, a shower, the washer and dryer, and a coal furnace in the basement. My parents added a bathtub after living there for a few years. We didn't have a phone niche. We had a wall phone that was a party line phone. You would pick up the phone and hear the conversation that was taking place on the phone. You had to wait for the neighbor to get off the phone before you could make a call. If you asked nicely your neighbor usually would hang up so you could make your call.

[@CLMoffatt]

I grew up in Chicago and still live here (after having been gone for over 15 years). I'm 99% certain that what is in your backyard is not a coal chute but a manhole cover for access to the sewage line out of your house. Coal chutes in Chicago were typically on the lower portion of the foundation and usually found in the 'gangway'. What you have is typical of most Chicago backyards where there is an access hole to the sewage system. It even looks like it says 'SEWAGE' on the manhole cover.

[@queenmotherhane4374]

I agree. The only house in my old neighborhood with a coal chute had a small doorway in the side of the house, through which the coal delivery would be poured down the chute to the cellar.

[@Angelique2716]

This makes much more sense, as the man delivering the coal is not going to be shoving snow off everyone's lid.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@Angelique2716 I remember everyone in my town getting their coal bin filled up in the fall, before the first snowfall. Maybe businesses had coal delivered more often, but homes got one coal delivery a year.

[@johnfritz1164]

That is a sewage drain from the kitchen sink. My grandmother’s house had one like this a few feet outside the kitchen window. A coal chute would have been square and on the side of the house not on the ground.

[@jeepstergal4043]

Agree. It's a sewage lid. I grew up in a 2 flat on the near north side. Coal chute was on the side of the house, coal went into the basement

[@francesmeyer8478]

Our house in Central Illinois, built in 1919, had a coal chute door set in the foundation of the house. The coal room is gone but the door remains.

[@AWordofHope]

This is wonderful 😃 you're like a better version of the History channel... entertaining. Seriously this is really interesting to learn about old houses. Such rich history. Thanks for sharing your home with us. That spot was purrrrfect for your kitty 🐈‍⬛

[@sharonduffey]

and better than the TV show 'This Old House'!

[@AWordofHope]

@@sharonduffey definitely!!

[@Lynne.E.Davies]

We had milk doors beside the back door. It had one door on the outside and one on the inside. The milkman would place two bottles of milk from the outside and the homeowner would retrieve the milk from the inside.

[@stuckinmopro8533]

I grew up in a 200 year old home in New England. When the house was first built it was a simple square box and over the years new sections were added. We definitely had a new fangled phone niche; I spent my teenage years laying on the floor in front of it with my feet up against the wall talking on the phone. Of course you couldn’t go farther away than the length of the phone chord, lol!

[@piperbird7193]

Also grew up in and around old New England homes. Narrow, steep stairs, weird waist high closets, additions that were always just a little bit crooked. One of the houses I lived in had a kind of normal kitchen, but the sink was down this long back hallway in a tiny pantry. Since it was built before electricity, there was no thought that a sink needs to go with a stove and fridge, so the sink was in the pantry where you'd wash food or dishes.

[@sterlingodeaghaidh5086]

Phone niches werent common out here, it was most common to have a phone jack in each room that you could have a landline hooked to.

[@eDoc2020]

​@@sterlingodeaghaidh5086 Before 1968 the phone company wouldn't let you use your own phone so phone jacks were much less common than they would later be.

[@1ntwndrboy198]

The house we lived in as a child had an old coalchute and an old gravity fed furnace.😮 It had huge sized air ducts. It looked like a big octopus 😯. 👍✌️. Really enjoy watching this site.

[@michaelwarren2391]

The laundry tub (sink) was actually to wash clothes in - before there were automatic washers. My Mom told me that one side was for soapy water, the other to rinse.

[@beckysimeone4882]

My Grandma called it a washbasin.

[@luisvelasco316]

We had a washer that would drain into the laundry sink, then suck it back into the machine for another rinse. Then you would pull the plug to let it drain for good.

[@TheRealDrJoey]

My Mom called them the stationary tubs.

[@KatjeKat86]

@@beckysimeone4882 We grew up calling them twin tubs. The one in the house I own from the 1940s actually has a built-in scrubboard on the one side.

[@janicesullivan8942]

Some of those sinks had a built-in washboard.

[@armorer94]

Coal chutes were quite common in the UK. In fact, Jules of "Joolz guides" points them out on his walking tours of London.

[@sylviagibson4639]

OOOOOHHHHH Laurance, My grandfather built his house in Pittsburgh in the early 40s, and in the basement a lone toilet under the stairs and the huge laundry sinks. There was also a root cellar under the front porch.

[@ironear7748]

My grandparent's house had a coal chute that ran down into a small room in the basement. When they converted to gas heat, my Dad, who was into photography, turned that into a dark room where he processed his film!

[@jennifermorris6848]

You may want to get your house tested for Radon. Here in the Midwest older homes May have naturally occurring Radon.

[@nancyparker8363]

Doesn't radon only occur in the basement?

[@samanthab1923]

It would have been conducted during the home inspection.

[@nancyparker8363]

@@samanthab1923 Do all home inspectors offer that test?

[@loistverberg900]

Ahh good thought - there is a lot of this in Iowa where I grew up. I built radon detectors for a physics project, and my professor would take a garbage bag and put it over a crack in his basement floor and collect a very detectable sample overnight. But if you Google maps there actually isn't much of it around Lake Michigan, where I live now. So maybe Lawrence is in a better spot for that too.

[@samanthab1923]

@@nancyparker8363 It is an add on fee.

[@whyjnot420]

Where I am in the northeast there is nothing unusual about a house that is 120 years old, such as my own. In fact that makes it quite a bit younger than a lot of the houses in this general area. Where houses from the later 1700's are not uncommon.

[@thevictoryoverhimself7298]

The midwest basement toilet is called a "Half bathroom". (where you get the zillow "1.5 bathrooms" thing). The water and sewer drain pipes from the upper floors just happened to be running along this empty area to it made sense to put a spare toilet there, just in case someone in the house had to go. I was born in the 1980s and my (1920s) house only had one shower and one toilet, except for the emergency one in the basement. Morning showering in a Midwest winter with 5 family members and one hot water tank was a special memory. Your shower is no longer than 300 seconds unless you were very selfish :)

[@elultimo102]

Not to be picky, but I believe a "half bath" has a sink, like a "powder room." I have seen "quarter-bath," to indicate a lone WC.

[@lisapop5219]

I was an evening bather for that very reason. Too cold

[@thevictoryoverhimself7298]

@@elultimo102 What region are you talking about?

[@elultimo102]

@@thevictoryoverhimself7298 ---I was raised in a SW Chicago suburb. I believe I read "quarter-bath" in real estate listings. (I left the state in '94, so it was a long time ago).

[@Augrills]

A half bath is a toilet and a sink but no shower

[@GizmoFromPizmo]

The house I grew up in had a coal furnace until well into the 1960s. The basement was ALWAYS covered in coal dust and soot from the furnace. My grandmother used to shovel the ashes and cinders into a pale and then spread them in her garden in the backyard. Our house was so old that it did not have a phone niche but we had phone service, nevertheless. We had the laundry room too with a single toilet off to the side. A house built in the 1940s was a much newer house than the one I grew up in. We found a date on a piece of the house that said, 1873 (and that was NOT the address. It was the year 1873.. Believe it or not, that house is still standing. It has a gas furnace now, though.

[@nancyparis9975]

The woodwork in your home is beautiful!

[@caulkins69]

So many houses have had the woodwork painted over by someone who decided that woodgrain is dated. They're lucky that never happened to their house.

[@kenc2257]

Nice wood doors.

[@rasowers]

FYI. Those toilets are good plumbing defense system. Back in the day the sewage system wasn't as reliable or perceived as reliable. Those toilets are the lowest point/first point of access for the sewage system and therefore the point at which the sewage system would backup at if there was a sewage system failure. In other words so that poop would spill in the basement and not on the main floor. We have the same thing in old south Dakota houses and we don't have coal mining.

[@jeanieschrag5378]

I lived in a house that was built in the mid 1800s. It had a small room, about 7'× 10', off the living room with a door that had the top half glass. I figured it was for funeral vewings because the bottom of the door was hand carved with a wreath. There was a small graveyard on the property.

[@NotKev2017]

Not necessarily, most houses of that era had parlors. Purely a room for entertaining.

[@sterlingodeaghaidh5086]

Funeral parlors were a very common thing back in the day, most houses had them becuase at this time most funerals happened at the deceased house, it wasnt until the 1930's onward that funeral directors started bringing bodies to their place for prep and viewing. This is actually were the term "Funeral Home" comes from, as funeral directors would often renovate their house to facilitate funeral work. ITs a cool tidbit of culture that we often forget these days but has influence on our lives like none other.

[@dboutier5636]

I lived in a Home in New Rochelle New York it was built in the late 1910s early 1920s. The homes in that area now sell well over $1 million so you have an idea of what the neighborhood was like. There was a lone toilet in the basement. It was designed to be used by the gardeners or any workmen in the house. I guess they didn’t have to wash their hands or could use the hose outside. The maids room had its own separate bathroom.

[@tprescott]

If your house from this time period didn't have a Phone Niche, you might have a specific piece of furniture in place of one called a Gossip Bench. There were many variations but they all followed the same , basic layout. It was a bench seat with shelf for your telephone and a storage area for Telephone Directories beneath it. Was this just a thing here in the US or did the memo on this item make it across the pond?

[@nigelwylie01]

Mitty Wolf, yes, we had those strange phone stools, with Directory storage built in in the U.K. too. Usually upholstered in velour and a gaudy gold trim with tassels. Very 1970s!

[@echoedinnocence]

@@nigelwylie01 I'm glad that we are not the only one who had gossip benches. 👍 Ours were gaudy too 😂 my aunt had an "avocado green" velvet one. 😂

[@nigelwylie01]

@@echoedinnocence haha! Yes, a common colour here in the U.K. too. I seem to remember the Directory storage compartment was often surrounded by ridiculous wooden mini pillars? Presumably an attempt to lend the piece of furniture an air of classical elegance! 😂. They were especially popular in ‘Bed and Breakfast’ establishment hallways here.

[@LymanPhillips]

We still have a telephone table in our house, although right now it's a place for our 2 cats to loll in the sun.

[@zyoninkiro]

@@LymanPhillips The telephone table in my place is still used for phones, as a place to charge them. Assuming the cats are not using the table as their Judgement Pulpit.

[@ANiceMarmot]

Pittsburgh Toilets are also fairly common in Northern WV houses, though more for coal miners and those who worked at the coke furnaces.

[@grannyoakley20]

My house was built around 1895-1900. It has a basement added after the house was built, and in the middle of the basement for the world and it’s wife to see…..is a toilet. 🤔

[@samanthab1923]

How do you build a basement after a house is build ❤️

[@grannyoakley20]

House jacks…and they are still in place down there

[@evansjessicae]

@@samanthab1923 It could be that the house was originally built on stilts on the side of a hill, and then they later built a 3-sided bottom floor underneath. Living in Florida, I don't know much about basements, but I recently stayed at an Airbnb that was made like that.

[@samanthab1923]

@@evansjessicae It’s interesting because it’s not the first time I’ve heard that about a house the same age. That one was in WVA. They had the Pittsburgh toilet too.

[@diwi1942]

My sister's basement has a toilet up on a pedestal. Shower and washer and dryer also. Not sure about a sink.

[@seiyuokamihimura5082]

Definitely miss having our old house. It was older, but still.

[@drizztcat1]

The first house I owned, built and purchased in the mid 90's, had a phone niche near the front door. We used it to store keys and random crap like pens, pencils, safety pins, clothespins, rubber bands, etc.

[@LindaC616]

We had a small arched in the wall between the living room in the dining room. It was right next to the side door, and that was where we put the phone. The house was built I believe in the fifties, I grew up in the seventies

[@MrSloika]

Before WWII that average home only had one phone and people wanted to show it off, hence the phone alcove or phone niche. By the 1960s it was not uncommon for households to have two or more phone lines. It was no longer consider chic to show off a phone

[@namelessone3339]

I used the phone niche to keep a white ceramic Blessed Virgin Mary figure which had red painted fingernails.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@MrSloika I the hinterland area where I'm from, you couldn't get more than one phone line into a house until the late 1970's. My father built our house in 1965. He wanted to put in more than one phone line, and the phone company absolutely would not let him do it. In fact, my father had all kinds of forward-thinking ideas for the house that weren't possible until at least a decade after he built it.

[@gemoftheocean]

@@MrSloika I don't think so much as 'show off, rather it was centrally located, and an out of the general traffic was a good place to take a phone call. Phone calls were often short then. Lots of party lines, and larger families. People didn't monopolize the phone so much back then in the 40's and into the 50s. More than one phone in the house started becoming more popular in the 60's with extension phones.

[@csueconner9711]

I am envious of the large size of the laundry room

[@jodystepnowski695]

Our 1906 basement in Northern Illinois has a defunct old toilet, shower, and nearby laundry tubs. We’ve also a wall mount pulldown ironing board. And the round metal lid near our back door covers the old cistern, disconnected long before we moved it.

[@neccron9956]

That phone niche is actually the place that the door bell chimes were mounted (I had the same thing in my house). In the period in which this house was built, the door chime was a set of tubular bells with a striker unit at the top of it (it looks like it was replaced by a modern bell). Then it looks like it was modified to also house a phone.

[@hgman3920]

It's not uncommon to find tiny bathrooms under staircases in older mid-western houses

[@diannt9583]

Even here in New England I looked at one when I was house hunting. It was the only bathroom in the house. So if you had the urge in the middle of the night, you had to tumble down the steep stairs, run through the living room, round the corner into a hallway, pass through the kitchen and then find the door leading into the bathroom under the steps you'd just tumbled down. Needless to say, I passed on purchasing that house.

[@sandy4282]

The house I owned was built in 1918 by a russian gentleman for his 2 spinster sisters. It had a coal room and a chute in the the wall for the coal. It also had a blocked off chimney that was built into the wall for a giant coal stove. Every room had a door to keep heat in only the spaces you wanted. I think I counted 12. It still had a claw foot tub in the bathroom. The kitchen had cupboards that were all the way up to the 12 foot ceiling. Old houses are amazing! They had character. Nothing like the generic ones they make now.

[@k.b.tidwell]

I'll never forget going inside an old three story house renovation when I was a teenager. The walls inside had been torn off to insulate and the wall studs were 2x4's that were one piece from the foundation to the roof...three stories of ten foot ceilings. "We ain't wastin' time joining studs!" Character, indeed.

[@SMElder-iy6fl]

And they were better constructed.

[@kevinconrad6156]

a 1942 house, good buy. Some of the best built homes. America had just entered WWII and new construction of houses was stopped except when needed for the war. A 1942 house was the last they worked on and well built because they had time before being laid off.

[@madgevanness4011]

Or hired for war work.

[@caspence56]

Hearing coal being delivered is definitely a nostalgic sound from my childhood. I remember my dad having to get up in the middle of a cold winter night and going down to the furnace room to throw a few more shovels of coal on the fire. The other feature many old houses had was a built-in ironing board in the kitchen. Probably some younger viewers are going to think "What's an ironing board?" Love your channel, congrats to you and Tara on the purchase of your lovely home, and I've been a subscriber to Brit Box for two years now.

[@bigscarysteve]

My grandparent's home had an ironing board built into one of the kitchen walls. I was forced to sell the house to a flipper due to financial circumstances. He removed the ironing board and the door that closed over it. Now there's a big ugly niche in the wall that he pained black.

[@LythaWausW]

Oh, we had a built-in ironing board in the dining room! Thanks for reminding me.

[@SailorAllan]

Yes ! our Chicago house also had a "built in" ironing board niche in the kitchen wall. as the family grew and a larger kitchen table was needed, there was no room to open the ironing board door anymore. Mom got a portable one, she ironed a LOT.

[@caspence56]

@@bigscarysteve I hate when people remove old and quirky things like that from a house. I love seeing and using things that have some history behind them. For instance, in my kitchen I have a collection of old kitchen tools ( rolling pins, egg beaters, wooden spoons, etc.) as well as old cookbooks (1920's up to WWII). I often think about who might have used them while cooking for their family. I'm sure your Grandmother ironed a lot of laundry on that ironing board.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@caspence56 I know what you mean--and I feel exactly the same way you do. Hubert Humphrey once said that the reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is because they have a common enemy--the parents! When I was a child, I spent a lot of time hanging out at my grandmother's house because it was within very easy walking distance. Her house was built in 1915, so it was very old-fashioned compared to my parents' 1965 house. My grandmother had only lived there since 1947, but most of her belongings were from the early 1920's, when she had gotten married. She was very opposed to all the more recent innovations, and I picked that attitude up from her. My mother's taste trended toward futuristic-looking furniture and other stuff from the late 1950's and early 1960's--I found it aesthetically horrifying when I was a child, and I still feel the same way about it today--although now it does have a tinge of nostalgia to it. Doing laundry with my grandmother was fascinating. She had an old washing machine from the 1930's. After the clothes were washed, she'd run them through the wringer. "Don't get your fingers in there!" she'd scream at me. Then she'd hang them on the clothesline in the back yard to dry. If it was raining, or if it was winter, she had a secondary clothesline in the attic. I assumed the disappearance of clotheslines in my town was simply due to everybody buying a dryer, but I've been told that my city has actually outlawed clotheslines. (I dunno about the veracity of that claim.)

[@mags102755]

That was interesting about the coal chute. I also loved the way your cat took over the phone niche. LOL Thanks!

[@MrSloika]

Very common to find basement toilets in old houses in New Jersey as well. The reason you stated for these weird basement amenities is correct. At the time houses in the Northerner part of the country were heated with dirty coal. Another reason is that the Northern states were heavily industrialized and industrial jobs were very dirty. Dad would come home filthy from his factory job and enter through a basement door. In the basement he'd clean up and change his clothes before heading upstairs to the clean part of the house.

[@lisapop5219]

Too bad you didn't get the quirky milk door. It's a niche on the outside where the milkman would leave your order and where you would leave the empties. I have heard that some houses had an interior door so you wouldn't have to go outside but I've never seen one of those. The milk door was a handy hiding place because parents never thought to look there lol.

[@loistverberg900]

We had one of those milk boxes.. Doors on inside and outside. My dad filled it with foam insulation because it leaked heat like crazy.

[@johnhelwig8745]

I had one before I expanded my kitchen. Used it to store the spray nozzles for the hose.

[@randomcommenterfromdownund8949]

The previous apartment I lived in, in Australia, had one of those, with doors on both sides, and a hook and eye closure for both so that when the milkman opened his side of it to leave the milk, he couldn't just reach through and open the inside door and peep at your kitchen.

[@michaelhenault1444]

Laurence, I hope 🤞 I got that right. A few ideas for you Russia may be the largest country but add US and Canada land mass. Russia is slightly smaller! Also Ben Franklin $100 bill played a central role in the American lending library system. While the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, the lending library system which is connected to the LOC allows Americans access to a lot of books, journals and entertainment almost always FREE. Franklin a man of the Enlightenment made his practical ideas 💡 a reality. Footnote: Franklin actually met Voltaire at a Parisian gathering and both received an ovarian by all present.

[@terrysuemakesvideosforyou9940]

The little niche in the wall also was to house the doorbell chimes on the wall above. They hung down on the wall in the niche. My home in Detroit had all of these features too!

[@nedludd7622]

At 70, I have never heard "niche" pronounced "nitch" and I have I lived in a half-dozen or more disparate regions.

[@markbanash921]

Your state of Illinois still is a major coal producer. It has large reserves of bituminous coal that are needed for steel production (hence Gary, IN). This type of coal is pretty good for home heating, so it was very natural that it would be used for both in your part of the Midwest.

[@kathyastrom1315]

I grew up not too far north of Coal City, IL. In fact, there is still a famous local candy called G-Shaft candy, named for one of the mine shafts there.

[@NotKev2017]

Steel production and also for electricity. Which is why going to electric vehicles isn't all that green.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@kathyastrom1315 G-Shaft candy? Now that is the most American bit of Americana I've ever heard of!

[@kathyastrom1315]

@@bigscarysteve it’s a hard candy with notes of root beer, peppermint, and other flavors. It’s now sold exclusively by a Joliet candy store, but it was created by a woman widowed by a mining accident who had to support her children. So, she pulled out an old family recipe and named the candy after the mine shaft whose entrance she could see from her front window. Her family sold it in stores throughout the wider Joliet area for decades until they sold the recipe to the Joliet shop.

[@sdrc92126]

Coal in the stocking is actually a pretty good gift.

[@macarde10]

That looks like a sewer cover for your septic system. Coal chutes in Illinois were either in walls or what might now be a small window.

[@zzydny]

For a couple of years when I was a kid, my family lived in a house that was built in the mid-1700's (yes, in the US) and we used a massive old fireplace to help heat the place. We did this by burning huge chunks of coal, and we kept a coal skuttle ready filled nearby. (And, yes, I am older than dirt) I have no doubt that this is now impossible.

[@catherinesanchez1185]

Actually, I think they still make coal fired stoves/heaters for homes. They're supposed to be quite efficient and less polluting these days compared to their older cousins. They're mostly used by people going "off grid" in areas that don't have easy access to wood or other forms of heating i believe.

[@frozenjoe6313]

Dear Z.. Not so much. My house was built in 1965, has fuel oil central heating , plus a beautiful stone fireplace, with a built-in wood burning insert

[@MichaelWells770]

I grew up in one of those 1930s homes that did indeed have a phone nook in the hallway. It is actually pretty large, so it confused me growing up as to what it was for. That house also had a milkman little cabinet built into the wall of the service porch, with a door on each side of the exterior wall, so they could deliver it when the homeowner was not there. And I'm pretty sure that house had natural gas heating since the start.

[@lisam444]

Congratulations on your "new" home! I live in Chicago, and I think what you are referring to as a coal chute, is actually a catch basin (storm drain).

[@luisvelasco316]

Our storm drain/catch basin in a house outside Chicago was actually IN the basement, with a sump pump in it. It was big enough to hold a couple hundred gallons, I'd estimate. But the basement still had a bad flood at least once. We also had a shower, in an open stall, but it was too spooky to use that when I was a pre-teen kid!

[@wesleyrussell8386]

Huh. The phone niche, I've seen at least a couple houses that have very similar features in similar locations that were used to house very large (novelty?) tubular door bells. Like big brass tubes of varying lengths that presumably got hit by the the device they were hanging from in the niche to make the doorbell noise, when triggered electrically by someone pressing the button outside. Maybe those were made to fill the obsolete niche once other house phone devices were invented? Maybe it's just a similar-looking thing that's totally different?

[@joannunemaker6332]

I love the woodwork in your new home. I love hearing about the quirks of older homes. It's very interesting how things that were so important then doesn't always exist in our times now.

[@dougbowers4415]

I was wondering if you have a laundry chute. Lots of old houses had them going from the 2nd floor to the basement laundry room.

[@slg5135]

Ohhh! That must be why they're called Pittsburgh toilets. At least that's what my friend called it when I showed her the random toilet I have downstairs in my basement in my 1939 Michigan house. I assumed it had something to do with stopping the basement from flooding. But thank you for clearing that up.

[@kenc2257]

From what I've heard, a "Pittsburg toilet" is usually out in the open--no walls. Lawrence's toilet has nice wooden walls--which were probably added(?) in a later renovation.

[@pgtmr2713]

You jam it with a Steeler's pee towel when the Brown's don't want to go down.

[@queenmotherhane4374]

The toilets installed in basements for flood control tended to be installed in some random location like the middle of the floor, so I agree that this one was simply meant to be a regular loo. In my parents’ newlywed apartment, built in my grandparents’ walk-out basement in 1945-6, the toilet was in its own little room next to the kitchen. You’d have to use the kitchen sink to wash your hands.

[@slg5135]

@@queenmotherhane4374 Mine is next to a wall in a corner. And there is a one of those old-fashioned chrome bathroom cabinets above it. There are no walls enclosing it, but it isn't in the middle of the floor either. Also, under my utility sink there is some sort of a drain that's a precursor to a sump pump. To help deal with floods. But I've been here for 10 years and thankfully I haven't had any water in basement.

[@jenniferbrady5143]

So, many homes in the northeast also have this “toilet room” in the basement - my house included. There is also something called the Pittsburgh Toilet, which is a basement toilet with no surrounding walls… just a toilet floating free in the middle of the basement. I’ve found examples of this as far as Delaware. So while (or whilst) not unique to Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Toilet did originate in Pittsburgh.

[@k.b.tidwell]

I love factoids like this. It's the most fun part of social media, sharing this stuff.

[@deborahgough8523]

Ironically the lone toilet in the basement was always referred to as the Pittsburgh toilet and a lot of times it was just there. No walls or anything, just off in the corner or near the stack.

[@bigscarysteve]

I've never heard it called a "Pittsburgh toilet." I'm from the greater Pittsburgh area. Maybe it's like Chinese food--in China, they just call it food.

[@AshleyBrooke81]

Yup, the Pittsburgh Potty! I grew up 45 minutes northeast of the city in a steel mill town and we just had the toilet against one wall with no other walls around it, a cinderblock shower, and the two basin cement laundry tub. The "fancy" people would make it classier by putting a shower curtain around the toilet to give yourself some privacy.

[@deborahgough8523]

@@AshleyBrooke81 for the world and spiders to see🤪 I grew up in Cleveland and we didn’t have it but many of our neighbors did, and we still called it a Pittsburgh toilet.

[@PhilipReeder]

Actor Harrison Ford grew up in Chicago and in an interview many decades ago stated that he remembered trucks dropping off piles of coal onto the sidewalk for each home or apartment building on his street. Later in the day, a man would come along and shovel the coal off the sidewalk and into the coal chutes. Ford said that inspired him with its simplicity of a man with a job (manual labor), one thing to do and doing it. (paraphrasing) He knew despite wanting to be an actor, he needed something to fall back on when times were tough so he became a carpenter - self taught. He got the role of Han Solo because he was building a door for Francis Ford Coppola's office and ran into George Lucas. Lucas didn't want actor's he'd already worked with before in Star Wars, but asked Ford to help in casting by sitting in for auditions with other actors. The rest is history, all because of coal (chutes).

[@k.b.tidwell]

That's useful to me because a) Harrison Ford...so much of a hero when I was growing up, b) his job philosophy validated my way of looking at life, c) it fleshed out the story I had already heard consisting of your last two sentences, d) reaffirmed one of the few things I like about these community comment sections, which is the sharing of neat things. Thank you!

[@Fridge56Vet]

The basement laundry room, toilet, utility sink +/- shower is usually what I think of today as a "mud room" more so than a "vestibule", though in my experience it's now more common to be in that location vs. the basement. Glad to see the blue sofa made it! 😁

[@knottybynature3534]

ahhhh the old Pittsburgh potty

[@offrails]

Growing up in NZ, it was actually common for the loo to be in a room by itself. Usually the bathroom (with the basin plus a tub and/or shower) was nearby, and in fact my grandparents had a place where the shower was also in its own room - apparently washing your hands after the deed was done was not as much of a thing back then.

[@kenbadoian2476]

Look around for an outdoor garbage pit. It was a hole that contained a large deep pail with a handle. One a weel the garbage man would come around and empty it. Also wsaan trashand ash man. They would come around and empty your galnized trash cans. How do I know. Born in 1943 in Cambridge MA. Remember them from my childhood. Ash man OK but on a hot summers day the garbage "person" themselves and their old chain driven mack truck were ripe. We called them the honey wagons. Why I do not know but we did.

[@evelyngrammar]

I have watched many episodes of the British show "Home Under the Hammer" that feature lots of homes with a separate toilet room and bath or shower room. There is rarely a sink in the toilet room.

[@evelyngrammar]

@Nicky L I rented an apartment in the St Katharine Docks area of London. The toilet was on the opposite side of the apartment from the bathroom. These appeared to be post-war construction apartments, built in the 50s. On Homes Under the Hammer I saw many homes with the partition wall. And I've rented a number of flats in Europe over the years and a number of them had bathrooms in a different area from the toilet. I think they may have been add-ons when indoor plumbing became available. It's always fun to see how we've learn to adapt spaces.

[@CalmJasper]

I live ina small rural town in Illinois, about a 3 1/2 hour drive south from Chicago. About 2 years ago they actually dug up the sidewalks so that they could fill in all the coal chutes on the main shopping district streets. It was kind of amazing to see when they pulled up the sidewalks and you could see the rooms that had been blocked off and not changed for decades.

[@k.b.tidwell]

I hope somebody photographed or documented all of that just for the historical aspect. That was like buried treasure, sort of!

[@jeffdege4786]

1942 probably means rock lath and plaster. Prior to 1930s most interior walls were strip lath and plaster. After the 1950s they were gypsum wall board. In between they were rock lath, which was a specially treated gypsum board over which plaster was applied. It is, in my mind, the best material for interior walls. The plaster doesn't peel off the way it does with strip lath when the keys break, but it still has the thickness and density of plaster, so it's less fragile than wall board and provides much better soundproofing.

[@scotpens]

The house where I lived for most of my childhood had chicken-wire lath and plaster walls. It was built in 1962.

[@joelinpa185]

My 1947 house has rock lath and horsehair plaster. I was surprised the first time I went in our attic and saw the gypsum boards were only 18" wide.

[@Jeetaruey]

My grandma's house had the basement toilet, sink, and shower that were just sectioned off with a shower curtain that could be moved on the track to cover the shower or the toilet, but not both at the same time.

[@k.b.tidwell]

That makes me think of the Forman's basement on "That 70's Show". A shower right inside the back door, exposed but with a circular rod and curtain hanging there. The washer and drier just across from there. You never see a toilet, but you don't often see the toilets on TV anyway. That was in Wisconsin, so I guess it was for the dirty cheese makers, all covered in milk curd and cow turd, coming in to wash up at the end of the day. 😁

[@trishrowland7782]

I grew up in a house with a coal chute and a coal bin. My grandfather shoveled coal as needed during the winter. It would get pretty cold in the house overnight.

[@OldMan_PJ]

My experience eavesdropping on sounds from many public toilets across the US (while sitting on the loo myself) is that most Americans don't wash their hands after using the toilet.

[@lifeandtheuniverse42]

I love older homes, I adore those doors with horizontal panels especially. My house was built in 2000 and the walls are thin and the doors are common and boring.

[@bigscarysteve]

I know what you mean. I generally find any home built after 1930 to be aesthetically revolting.

[@kurtsnyder4752]

Does that cat have a rather fetching form as a human(April Tantro's) when you aren't looking? See Star Trek the original series episode Assignment Earth.

[@carschmn]

Love the roughed in toilets. They’re common in St. Paul as well. I have basically the same type of toilet room in my 1921 house as well. No shower but it has a full bar.

[@ruthiebee6139]

I grew up in Eastern Washington and lived in a house built in 1902 or 1903. We had a coal room in the basement and I would go down with my dad when he would shovel the coal. Then on the 2nd floor at the top of the stairs was a very small toilet only "toilet room". I can hardly fathom it now. It was a great house to play hide and seek in though. Lots of fond memories❤

[@BobKeefe]

My grandmother‘s house on the north side of Chicago had similar features: it had a cast-iron door on the side wall that went into a wooden coal bin; there was a similar door on the porch for the iceman to put ice into the icebox; and it had a bathroom with a sink and shower in the basement along with the washer and dryer; she also had a tiny 3 ft. Square closet with a clothes chute in it that she used as a telephone booth so she could close the door and have private conversations on the telephone.

[@williamking8951]

Sounds just like the 1920s-era bungalow that I grew up in in the North Austin neighborhood of Chicago.

[@shallowgal462]

The house doesn't have a (possibly sealed now) milk delivery door on the porch or next to a side or back door? My building has a sealed one next to the side door, which is a bit inconvenient, since where I live we still have milkmen who drop off glass bottles of milk from their trucks and pick up the empties to take back with them for cleaning and reuse.

[@LisaApril]

That your kitty is able to leap up into the phone niche is the whole reason why I find cats to be the bomb. Cats are so cool. They can even make their way up to the top of a door and perch on the inch and a half that the top of the door affords them. I love cats, and I even love wondering where they are and finding them in a cabinet or some other Interesting place❤

[@theemarydee1610]

Cats seem to pose like they’re going to take a selfie I think they invented the selfie

[@stever3658]

When I was in elementary school, our teacher taught us to remember that prepositions were anywhere a cat could go.

[@stevethepocket]

@@stever3658 I hate it when my cat goes "before"; I have to use the time machine to get her back. Going "like" isn't as bad; finding her is like a little game of Prop Hunt!

[@samsam1720]

We didn't have a toilet in the basement but we did have a shower. It was just a shower head attached to overhead pipes and you stood on a wooden pallet. Nothing else. No curtain, no enclosure. We also had the coal chute on the side of the building. I was always disappointed if I wasn't there for the delivery. We kids would "help" our grandfather shovel coal into the furnace with our own little shovels. Sweet memories.

[@LisaApril]

Be careful about doing any remodeling. Houses built back then Might contain asbestos in the roof shingles, the siding, the insulation, or the thinset under the linoleum floor. Just be careful and have a specialist come in and test everything before any home improvements are made. I love Your content, your personality and everything you’ve done to bring us great content!

[@truckerkevthepaidtourist]

I think he knows about that Have a big project over to hopefully remove all the asbestos in United Kingdom within the next 40 years

[@markgaudry7549]

Also be aware that lead paint may still be in there, as well as lead pipes and lead soldered copper pipes.

[@iodine63]

Yep....We lived in Detroit when I was young. My dad worked for Ford Steel. He came home from work went to the basement to shower and change clothes. He washed his work clothes then came up for dinner. When Ford Rouge Steel had a family open house we got to see why. We walked the steel division up on the catwalk to see the steel being made. When we got home my mom said to go down shower and change in an assembly line. We put our clothes just in the laundry tub that was filled with cold water. It was black from all the micro pieces of steel that embedded in the clothes. No wonder they had this in the Pittsburg houses.

[@piesciuk]

We grew up in a bungalow on Chicago's NW side built in 1912. We had an ice door in the pantry where the ice man used to make his deliveries. We also had what looked like a paper plate (but was actually metal) high on the kitchen wall that covered the old wood burning (I assume wood) stove exhaust pipe opening.

[@kathyastrom1315]

I just posted here about the icebox door in my Forest Park apartment! It would have opened directly onto the back of the icebox. I feel sorry for the iceman who had to trudge up the two flights of stairs multiple times to deliver his ice to all of the units on the floor.

[@lisapop5219]

We called it a milk door. The house I grew up in also had a pie plate. I never could work out how it was supposed to work. It was from the kitchen to the dining room. No sign of where it vented out to. When I lived, it was the 2nd story flat.

[@luisvelasco316]

My 1932 house in NC had the "paper plates" in the kitchen and the big bedroom (which also had a door to the outside; I guess to escape fire?). The stove hood was vented into the chimney which had been used for the kitchen stove.

[@massivereader]

American 'foursquare' houses built around the turn of the century (two story brick houses with a full cellar, attic with two dormers, one to the front one to the side, full open front porch, small open rear porch), typically had two small rooms under the front porch. One was called the 'root cellar' where root vegtables like potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions and apples as well as preserved foods were stored and a 'coal cellar' which has a small hinged cast iron door for coal to be delivered through via a chute from the bed of the coal truck.

[@jamesburton1050]

I have often imagined having a mudroom and bathroom separated from the public areas of the house, but connected to the bedrooms. For that same reason!

[@seameology]

That's exactly what we did when we built our farm house in the 70's. Because... cow manure. We were dairy farmers. The previous set up on the land was an entire separate building that had a shower and big sinks. We used it to butcher cows, deer, chickens and pigs. My big freezer also sat in there.

[@jamesburton1050]

@@seameology yep, sounds about right!

[@beckyriley2674]

I love your new home. The wood floors are brilliant! I love them and the old wooden doors in your house as well. Congratulations on finding such a gem!