I grew up in an old house that had windows that were raised and lowered using weights and rope. Seems like the rope was encased in the window frame. Does anyone else remember windows like that?
I lived in a house that had those as well. We had the windows replaced with modern ones because the old ones were drafty. I remember them cutting the ropes and you could hear the thud from the weights. I crawled up underneath and got the weights. Thank you for watching and sharing another old forgotten way of having windows.
We had these. We also had large, sliding, French doors that used the counter weights to open. It felt like the were gliding. Theywent into the walls on either side.
Yes, I lived in a 1930s apartment for 18 years and I still love how well those windows worked and how easily to leave the window how open or closed as you wanted. A simple mechanism that could last forever. Drafty though :)
I never had those but they sound interesting as well. We did have some French doors that swung open complete with the old glass that was wavy from the imperfections.
Our Victorian Farmhouse had those "sash" weights in our windows, we also had a coal chute and bin in our Yankee cellar. Those window were double hung, you could open them at the top and bottom at the same time and get good air circulation.
My landlord has multiple apartments in the Home I've cleaned most of them and always look for them. And there are tiny doors everywhere storage piping everything has a cute little door.
I would love to own one of these old houses. I love separate rooms, natural wood, pocket doors and everything in between. Houses looked so warm, elegant and beautiful.
@@Littlemom1977 In our local Technical college (now a regular college) they have a degree program in Home Restoration, not renovation) Since the Eastern Ohio Valley and Wheeling WV area has so many homes from the 1800's and early 1900's, people would rather restore the old lathe and plaster walls, and the beautiful wide woodwork, so we have a demand for restorers to bring the old homes back to their historic conditions instead of just throwing drywall up and putting cheap pine modern woodwork in. When we updated our 1907 home, we did upgrade the mechanicals, but the woodwork was kept as stained oak. The interesting thing is we are near Amish areas, and we can buy historic pattern oak woodwork cheaper from there than buy modern painted finger joint pine trim!
Who needs this open concept? I love my brick house built in 1926..solid as a rock, a full basement, and three stories ! Cobblestone driveway that leads to a detached 3 car garage, an acre of land, hardwood floors throughout, laundry chute, stained glass windows! I would never consider living anywhere that was built after 1940! What was built after the war is disgraceful !
@@maryellenquinn5267 "Open Concept" sucks. It was a bastard child of the late 1960s. I think the trend is turning around, now that people want man-caves, craft rooms, home theaters, etc. where they can get away from their spouse or kids.
My Great Aunt use to own a historic home that was part of the Underground Railroad. There were little hiddy holes and secret passages all over the house.
@@IraQNid My Great Aunt died 10-15 years ago and the house is no longer in the family. But they did a full remodel, so there are no bodies in the house. There were blocked up passages that lead to something underground...maybe sewers ort something, I dont remember. Still doubt there would be bodies there but maybe some cool artifacts.
I think the picture hooks need to make a comeback for apartments and dorms since we aren’t allowed to nail things in and command strips don’t always work with the wall texture.
Problem is repainting the apartments is more costly the more detail you have to avoid. Like how most rentals your inner door frams will always match the wall color. There's so many layers of paint in some places it's probably decreased the square footage.
My apartment has picture rails below the crown molding but I imagine most people don’t know what it’s for. The crown molding and picture rails are only in the living room though. It’s kind of neat how they did it. The crown molding, picture rail, and space between it are all white so it looks like one piece.
Have you ever heard of a "snow door"? It usually opened out into nothing. Used to allow people access to the outside when the snow was so high you were "snowed in", you could slide down the high snow to the ground. I had one in Wisconsin.
"Landline telephones used to be an essential form of communication." Okay, well cheers for making me feel ANCIENT at 51 years old, Rhetty for History!!
🙂LOL. I’m 52 and can laugh with you about this one. I remember in the mid-late 70’s when you could have two lines/phone numbers on your landline phone, and the base of the phone had a little turn-switch to select which phone number/line you were answering or calling from. At the time it was pretty cool.
Two words.. "party lines", also known as sharing a (landline) phone line with 3-6 of your closest nosy neighbors, who would sometimes listen to your phone calls. As kids, we were sometimes guilty of listening in too. ;) It was the only way you could have a phoneline in the house at that time.. it was a while before rural towns got enough wiring/back-end support so each house could have its own private phone line. I can remember my mom wanting to use the phone once for something semi-important and the worst of the town gossips had been monopolizing the line for some time. Mom finally picked up our phone and interrupted the call to tell Carrie Mae in no uncertain terms to hang up the damn phone NOW so someone else could get a word in. :D
There’s certainly a lot more old-growth wood in older homes, but survivor bias will always make past construction seem sturdier than new construction since only the well-built and maintained examples will remain from any era of the built environment.
Some don't realize and/or appreciate that when you see an old farmhouse that has the decorative wood ornamentation on the porches. Usually along the railing poles. That fancy woodwork was all hand made, in the yard, in front of the house while it was being built.
A feature on older homes built along the coastline, and often mistaken for a rooftop patio is a "widow's walk", they were used as a high vantage point overlooking the water so that the wives of sailors and fishermen could spot the boats of their husbands coming in to port.
The TV show ‘Bob’s Burgers’ has an episode involving a Widow’s Walk. The character Linda is convinced that the homeowner was murdered by his wife when she loosened a rail on the widow’s walk, and pushed her husband into the rail, sending him to his death. The perfect accident/murder!
The reason the laundry chute is no longer a thing is because it's illegal in many jurisdictions as it is a fire hazard. You will note that most homes now (with the exception of the stairwell) try to block air from moving from floor to floor except in fireproof ducts. In the event of a fire of the house would catch fire very quickly from floor to floor with a laundry chute
Ah, that makes sense. I did not think about that and now I'm amazed that people are putting them in. Makes me how many have done it despite the laws in certain areas. Thank you for watching and educating us about that.
Yes, laundry could get caught mid-chute. You can imagine having that problem and needing to get it out. A big pile of stuck laundry could pose as a fire hazard, as you mentioned.
@@grumpyoldwizard It's more about how readily fire can move from floor to floor then stuck laundry... This is also the reason why you will now find blocks placed between floors in houses now, whereas they used to use what is called balloon construction which provides fire passage from floor to floor. This is one of the reasons why it's harder to wire houses now after the walls are closed in
@@RhettyforHistory Very interesting! I can see why they're not used anymore, though the hobby engineer in me can't help but wonder if there's a way to make one that's fire-safe, because they sure are handy!
I remember back in the mid to late 90s, viewing a house with a friend and his parents that had one of those intercom systems. Not only could you call to different rooms from the kitchen or living room (where the main panel would have been), but many models came with AM/FM radio and some even had 8-track players or turntables, so you could have music playing throughout the entire house while entertaining, relaxing, or doing housework. They ended up buying the house.
I definitely remember touring some new home subdivisions in the early 90s. The model homes featured intercoms with just AM/FM, but I thought it was so cool.
My father had a house built in the late 1960s with an inter on which was connected to AM/FM & Reel-to-reel tape system. There was also a small chute in back of the fireplace that led outside, making it easier to shovel the ashes out. I loved that when it was my turn to clean the thing!
@@samantha2573 I'd forgotten my grandparents had this feature too! theirs dumped into the basement, but it still kept ash from getting scattered all over the carpet. Cleaning fireplaces is no neat matter. They also had the intercom/radio system, which stopped working at some point, but they never used it much anyway. I imagine it was a sneaky way to listen in on the kids.
I'm surprised that pocket doors did not become the norm for home interiors. They free up so much floor space and have a neater, cleaner look. I've lived in homes that had them, and loved 'em.
Yeah, but they also mean ripping out the whole wall when they get stuck. A kid throws a ball in the house and a hinged door gets damaged? go to Lowes and find a replacement that's easy to pop in. Paint it any color you like, and just paint over that when you change your mind. But refinishing a pocket door means taking off the molding and sanding it to bare wood, or risking painting it shut, not covering the old color, or bumping it off track. And God help you if it gets off it's track or the cat bats a small rock into it and it won't open or close the whole way...
I lived in a house that had a "summer kitchen." Apparently it was a secondary kitchen that was only used during the summertime because the heat from the wood stoves would be unbearable in the main kitchen. The summer kitchen had large doors and windows that could be opened to allow for additional ventilation.
That's still common here in the coutryside even with modern technology. They have more space for it to be built, it's larger and usually chaotic and it's hidden from guests while the unused spotless main kitchen is guest friendly.
@@christinebrooke7292 I live in Florida, never seen one. But wouldn't be surprised. Not sure if it would make a difference though, the heat can be unbearable even with open windows from all the humidity.
I saw that on a farmhouse in Macon, Georgia, years ago, but it was the only kitchen to the house. The house was L-shaped and you had to access the kitchen by stepping out from the parlor onto a long back porch. I assumed it was because of the summer heat. Not a problem here in the mountains of Wyoming.
I lived in house built in the last century that was/is still heated by a wood stove-in the kitchen. That would be normal if it was used as a cook stove also! Talk about hot! I never used the the gas oven in the winter , unless I wanted to faint! 🙄☄️ the person used it to replace propane heat. Good idea but what a lot of work. Always opening/closing windows, doors. Glad I finally got out of there for good!🤒😓🥵
Seems like all the small doors for deliveries could be one item on the list. Also, it would be a fine idea to bring these back for package deliveries to block theft
@@xaenon it would have to be designed for the largest standard Amazon box, and be built to allow things to go in but then not be accessible from the outside, and then make it so you have to open a door from the inside of the house to get the package. But then I think of why this would be outlawed immediately. Someone could get stuck in the package compartment after coming in from either side.
The different types of doors were for every different things though and they didn't look at all alike, at least once opened. It wasn't uncommon to see houses with multiple ones. One place I lived had a (disused) "coal door" (rather than a hopper - it just opened straight onto a slide to the bin, and was short and set very low to the ground), a hatch for milk deliveries, and a panel covering up where the ice door had been. You definitely didn't want the wrong thing going it the wrong door, but I suppose which led to what was obvious to delivery folks of the day.
I'm surprised you mentioned intercoms, but not speaking tubes. A friend's house had these, and since there were no moving parts to fail, they still used them frequently.
@@handuo6301 My late Grandpa would have the TV in the basement cranked up super loud. Sometimes I’d listen in to the news through the vent from the second floor.
I loved my grandparents old house. It was built in 1912 and it was a Sears and Robux assembly home. It had the servant stairs and a lot of these features. I was an 80s baby. So it’s cool to have grown up on these things, and to see that some of them are making a comeback. They were beautiful houses.
I 100% agree with the closed floorplan with the option of pocket doors. I live in a part of the world with very cold winters and very hot summers. It is way easier to heat and cool a smaller space. With the increased need for air conditioning this seems like a great idea. I never really liked open plan homes that much. I like small cozy rooms.
Our house also has a few pocket doors. Both bedrooms do, as well as the laundry room. Our house is over 70 years old, and is adobe, so the walls are very thick---over 2 feet in most areas. (Jan Griffiths).
The "old" phone plug is actually a newer one. The earliest telephone plug in any homes was a 4 hole receptacle for the 4 prong cord plug to connect the ;phone at different locations in a home. We converted our 1958 house to the smaller plugs around the mid-1980's.
Before that giant four-prong plug was a similar 3-prong version. And a still older fixture is just a box with screw terminals inside -- from days when installing a new extension phone was a telephone company service call. (And the instrument belonged to the phone company -- it was part of the phone network).
You just made me realize I may have had a few dreams about a very old house that has a whole 3rd floor upstairs that I’ve been afraid to go up to for those reasons! I live in it in my dream, but never venture up! Weird!
House a friend rented had transoms on the floor! They were really great. Open them in the evening and the cool air comes in the bottom, hot air goes out the top. Unfortunately, both sets were on the same wall. No cross-venilation.
Here's one more: high ceilings. If you've ever been in a home from the 19th or early 20th century in the American south, you might've noticed that the ceilings were weirdly high. Sometimes as high as 12 feet, compared to the 8 or so feet typical of modern homes. This was air conditioning. The high ceilings allowed warm air to rise higher, above the heads of the room's occupants. Today though, air conditioning and ceiling fans allow for lower ceilings and more compact, efficient buildings. Side note: if you're new to ceiling fans, you can change their direction. There's a switch somewhere below the fan blades. If it's up, the fan will spin one way and pull air up, if it's down or will spin the other way. Use this in the winter to push warm air down from the ceiling, and in the summer to pull it up.
Also from the American South. The house I grew up in had an attic fan. A friend of mine still has one and uses it during the summer months. It works well. If I ever have the chance to build a house, an attic fan will be included in its design.
Haha I commented more or less the same thing except I discussed how tall windows that could be raised and lowered went with high ceilings to circulate air in the room.
RE: Small Rooms \ Many Doors -- the "open concept" has actually made newer houses more vulnerable to fire than older homes. Our fire department does demonstrations encouraging folks to sleep with their interior doors closed as fire slows itself down with the smoke trapped in the room it starts in.
It makes them more vulnerable to fire, easier pickings for home invaders, harder to manage in terms of light and sound, harder to choose themes for specific rooms... there are a lot of issues with open concept design. I never liked being able to see everything that's going on in a house from any point within it. That just makes it lack privacy, especially if you also have large windows. It also makes the entire home feel like one big room. You could be in the living room or a bedroom or the kitchen because everything looks the same. If you don't make every single part of the house look the same, it just looks stupid because you have weird changes in wall color or decorations. There is no room to express the individuality of each space; you can't have a warm, cozy den full of soft pillows and a fireplace if you're also going to have an office across the giant, unending room with no separation in between. Having different rooms offers a way to clearly demarcate where one atmosphere ends and another begins. You can't really do that with open concept spaces, unless you're okay with it looking like an unorganized mess. Sorry for the long rant, it's just that you brought up a good point and I wanted to elaborate a bit on other areas where open concept is lacking. Thank you for the original comment.
Transoms had a more interesting purpose when gaslight was common: Gaslights put out a shocking amount of heat, and popping open a transom would let the hot air out instead of pooling around the ceiling and heating up the room. An open window wouldn't help nearly as much, because the heat would have to get down below head-level before it could get out.
They also made cooling the house more effective by creating a crosswind from temperature differential. You'll notice in a lot of old houses and school buildings, there are windows that open at the bottom, and windows that open at the top. Open windows on one side of the house at the top, and windows on the other side of the house at the bottom, and the temperature difference between the top and bottom creates more effective air circulation than simply opening regular windows. Honestly, older homes were often made more intelligently than modern homes.
That's so interesting- now I know why they were in my old apartment! They looked exactly like the picture in the video. We would open or close them every once in a while but not for any real reason haha
Transoms main purpose is to allow the build up of natural gas to escape. back in the day natural gas did not have the odor it does today. it was a silent killer.
An open transom window also allowed voices to be heard clearly from another room or a neighbor's apartment. Thus the expression "I heard it through the transom".
The newest house I've lived in was built in the mid=Eighties, and it has outlets for landline phones - as well as cable coax. Hearing this described as an "old house feature" makes ME feel real old.
@stopthecrazyguy 36+The thing I remember most vividly from that time was that cut=throat competition from long-distance carriers ("Remember, if you don't make a choice, they will make the choice for you") to be your preferred long distance provider. Just like the Big Three automakers, there were only three companies to choose from, and to be sure, the choice was even less consequential than picking a pick-up truck from Chevy, Ford, or Dodge. But you wouldn't have known that from how fiercely the battle for each landline was waged by those carriers.
We built our house about 13 years ago, and big concern was putting CAT 5 jacks in every room/bedroom so the kids could use computers in there in the future. Turns out we never needed them because wifi was becoming widely available. Now they date our house! LOL
Interesting fact: Ice Boxes were called "refrigerators" back when they were the only cold storage devices around. It was only after the mechanical versions started showing up that people began referring to the older version as "iceboxes" to distinguish them from the newfangled appliances.
Another interesting fact early refrigerators used gases that were known to be toxic until the invention of Freon which is less directly toxic. It caused its own problems The man who invented Freon also invented Leaded gasoline. Accidently killed more people than anybody else in history. Look up a YT creator named Veratasium. The video just came out.
My grandfather called the fridge a "icebox" he showed me a episode of the three stooges that showed what he was talking about. In natural three stooges form, i remember the house was on a hill with stairs and the ice was melted before they go to the top. LOL
I'm surprised you didn't talk about sleeping porches because you had some pics of old houses in the beginning that had them. I live in Tucson AZ and we have whole areas of older bungalows that all have a porch upstairs that is covered for sleeping. It has always been the nicest thing to sleep with the breeze blowing over you at night in the desert.
In Texas where most old houses were one story, the sleeping porch was across the back of the house. It had siding like the rest of the house, but only a third or halfway up, then screen above that.
Older houses in the Midwest have them, a holdover from times when a fan or open window was the only relief from summer heat. I slept on ours for years growing up.
When I was a kid in the early 50's, our house was built on 1908 and had some of the features mentioned. One feature you left out that was common in our area is the sleeping porch...in the lower states were high ceilings, outdoor cooking facilities, bay windows for catching breezes and cupolas for exhausting heat; to name a few.
We had 2 sleeping porches - one on the west end, the other on the east end of the upstairs hall. Aided in cross ventilation as well. House was built before air conditioning or forced air heat.
One of my aunts has a house with an upstairs sleeping porch, it was nice at first we used to play in there as kids but now when I go over it feels like the floor is so thin that you could fall through if you jump hard enough
I grew up in a 150yo house with pocket doors separating the formal living room, and informal family room. It was amazing how much of a difference they made in energy costs during hot summers, and cold winters. But it was amazing how much space it allowed for family gatherings, and larger parties.
How very cool!!! And of course I have to ask...was it a haunted house lol. My childhood house built in the 50s was def haunted...and my fam moved in circa the late 60s.
My old family home had French doors that allowed you to close off those parts of the house in the winter. And yes, it was haunted. Very strange things happened in that home! Built in the 1910's.
My grandparents owned a house that was on the National Register of Historic Places. At the side of the street, there was a decorative iron post with rings on it for tying up horse reins. When the city rebuilt the curb and sidewalk, they had to temporarily remove the post and then replace it in the exact same location. The house had thirteen rooms, and only one of them was a bathroom.
Probably when the house was built, there were no bathrooms in it... just an out'house'. Is the existing bathroom as big as a regular bedroom? Uhhh Huhhhh....
We live in a 1889 craftsman and I love all the charm that comes with it. I grew up in a home that was also 100 yrs old, so when it came to buying my own house we only looked at 2 newer homes, I hates them both haha! Not only is our home well made with beautiful wood floors, trim, built ins, and gorgeous stained glass windows, but we only paid 80 thousand for it! Now that was almost 20 years ago and now it's worth about 5 times as much, but still it was way cheaper than all the newer homes. I also see how quick these new homes go up, and the cheap materials used to make them and I wouldn't want a home like that. Sadly we are becoming empty nesters so we are going to be getting a smaller home on a lot more land sooner than later. I will miss my craftsman that I raised my children in when that day comes. Hope to sell it to another new family so they can build memories in it like we did.
I'd love to design and build my own home or buy an old one to refurbish (hopefully without lead or asbestos contaminants). New construction and even homes from throughout the mid to late 1900s are cheaply built without any real sense of style. The latter also have a tendency to be afraid of insulation, which is a massive pain to deal with. If I'm going to live in a house without proper insulation, you bet I'm going to look for something that has style and charm to it! I'm not as much of a fan of building my own home, even though I'm going into architecture, but at least I'll be able to identify problems unique to my future family's situation and address them in the design of the house. The placement of the master bathroom is a big one that I think about a lot... why is there never a buffer zone between the bathroom and the bedroom? Why not put something like a closet in between to absorb light and sound in the middle of the night if someone needs to use the bathroom?! The world may never know.
Makes me feel old! I remember a number of these things from my childhood in the early 1950's. We lived in an older home that had a number of these features. I remember the push-button on/off switches, milk doors, dial telephones, the old style electrical wiring, backyard incinerators for burning trash, hanging clothes on a clothesline to dry, cars before seat belts, street corner fire alarm boxes for reporting a fire, smog so thick it hurt to breath, party line telephone, and much more.
Yes, I think in the last 20 years it has sped by and things have changed so very quickly. People can't wait to get rid of those old things and embrace the new technology that means no wires and extra clutter. Don't get me wrong, I still like the old things.
Sounds like you are an American. I am English and was born and grew up in a home built in 1666. No inside toilet. No mains water, this came from a well and was brought into the house in buckets. No electricity. When I started to school I was fascinated with the light switches and taps(faucets) . At 72, I now live in a house built in 1972, with many modern conveniences but I still hang my laundry on the line outside on fair weather days. ps. My childhood was not too typical of the time, but one advantage was having 70 acres of land which allowed me a lot of freedom and a diet of home grown organic food. Love from England.
dial telephones? When I was little, to make a phone call you picked up the receiver, the operator came on and asked what number you wanted ("number please"). When dial telephones came along we felt like we had entered the high tech space age.
My mother used to work for an older lady back in the 90s. The house the old lady lived in was the one she had grown up in. It still had the push button lights and they still worked and there was a set of pocket doors that separated the living room from the dining room. The old farm sink had been there since the 1930s and all the bathroom fixtures were original from the 1920s. There were old daguerreotypes of her family in the house still and an old buffet in the dining area that was given to my mom when the old lady passed that my mom still has. It was a neat old house👍🏻
That does sound like a neat house. I love those old farm sinks and I'm not quite sure what they aren't more popular. I'm sure lady had some interesting keepsakes as well. Thank you for watching and sharing some memories of your mother and the lady she worked for.
@@RhettyforHistory oh yeah she did. She had some old paper money from the 20s in mint condition and some old spelling bee medals from when she was a kid. Her bed was turn of the century and so was her vanity and dresser. If I'm not mistaken they were her parents originally. She probably had a lot of other stuff that was very old and still in great condition but I never saw any of it. My paternal grandparents lived in an old farmhouse that had once been a school in the 1930s but there was very little left of the original interior as it had been redone. I think only the floors were original. Thanks for another great video 👍🏻
Thank you for this video. I'm 71 and remember push button lights,transom windows,milk chutes,laundry shoots, and some other cool things that brought back good memories😉.
My grandmother’s house had those things. The milk was still delivered into the little door in the kitchen when I was a kid. And there was a cabinet with a built in ironing board. Thanks for the explanation about the basement toilet. I always thought it was ridiculous but my husband is a contractor and he automatically used that setup for the original purpose.
The main problem with those were the proper height for drainage.If you're lower than the main drain, it won't flush and also the smell stays in the basement
@@blainerudy2255 My basement toilet works well enough with gravity alone, but my next-door neighbor's needs a macerating pump because the main line runs downhill from their side.
The farmhouse I live in, built in 1931, has an ironing board in a closet and I still use it. We also have a toilet and shower in the basement - enclosed since I've lived there...hubby uses it all the time with no problems with drainage to our septic system and no smell.
I wish they had also shown a built-in ironing board - there very popular. Another thing not shown was a cabinet between the kitchen and dining room that served both sides. We had one and it was really great to not have to carry dishes and flatware from the kitchen, just open from the dining room side. We also had a pocket door between the dining room and the kitchen. We had to put a hook and eye latch on it because our Australian Shepherd very soon learned to slide it open! Built circa 1900, we had the picture rails among other things mentioned here as well as beautiful leaded glass windows!
Loved this video. The only one I thought of - and lived with - was the attic fan. They were wonderful instead of air conditioning. Kept the house cool in the mornings & evenings. And the air in the house was always fresh. Wish I had one now!!
I think attic fans are still current. And they're every bit as useful in a house that has air conditioning, because they substantially reduce the air conditioning electric bill.
I grew up in muggy Missouri and remember well the comfort of falling asleep with cool air from my open bedside window being pulled in by the attic fan. As an adult I lived in an older "rowhouse" in DC which had a belvedere. This was a small tower in the ceiling at the top of the three story stairwell. It had transom windows on all four sides that could be opened to catch the breeze and draw the rising hot air out of the house.
@@bryanhenderson591 Most reputable HVAC companies will recommend attic fans when installing central A/C - it simply takes some burden off the A/C system.
Sounds like you are referring to a whole house fan. These are still used in the South quite a bit. Flip a switch in a cool part of the day and the whole house cools down in about 5 minutes. You can do the reverse in the winter if it gets warm in the afternoon.
The house I grew up in had something I was told was called a "borning room", which was intended for childbirth. It was paneled on all sides (ceiling, walls, floor) with wood paneling -- pine, I think -- and I'm guessing that was so that it could be easily sanitized. It was right off the kitchen. We used it as a den. Let's see... the house was also insulated with corn cobs behind lath and plaster. We discovered that when we rewired the house. It was interesting to see the old corn cobs because they are much smaller/shorter than the ones you see today.
@Rob Mikels We later moved to Maine and my mom told me that she heard from others that there, old houses used seaweed for insulation. I never tried to corroborate that but given it’s another plant material which has air cells built in, it makes sense to me.
One of my college dorms had picture rails. It was nice because not being allowed to puncture the walls is standard, but often students aren't given good alternatives.
Here in Japan, the intercom is still universal, along with the doorbell camera. My wife and I use ours every day! Japanese homes almost never have central heat/AC - they employ the room/space concept and have separate units for each room that needs to be temperature regulated.
If I am not mistaken, what you are describing is called zone heating and can also be accomplished with central heat/AC by using different thermostats, which then use dampers to direct the heat/cool air to where it is needed. Otherwise, the control is done by opening and/or closing vents/registers.
Because Japanese homes are rebuilt so often (isn't 30-40 years the norm?) I think there is less fear about putting in 'trendy' or house-wide features, such as intercoms or built in electronics, like self-heating bathtubs and fancy washlet toilets. By the time they start failing, it'll be time to rebuild the house. In other places, were the mentality is that house is essentially permanent, and maybe expected to last a hundred years or more, there is a mental reluctance to putting in similar features, since they will wear out far faster than the house and become a nuisance.
@@blatherskitenoir you're not suggesting that we've been building homes with more than a 20-year foresight, for the last 50 years I hope... Of note those houses 100 years and older are made mostly of primitive growth wood which is not as prevalent now is it once was
Living in Virginia, the freakiest thing I saw in some really old homes (mansions, really) were those servant stairs, as well as servant passageways. These were VERY narrow corridors that were hidden in the walls that servants would use to ferry food and drinks, etc. back and forth to the kitchen without disturbing house guests. I guess if you asked for more coffee **poof** a servant popped out of the wall with a fresh pot. I saw three such homes there.
The house I grew up in had pocket doors that allowed the living room to be bypassed completely, it was apparently used as a ballroom. There was a hallway that went around it, and both sets of doors were quite impressive. I miss the glorious usefulness of brass, beautiful, and self lubrication too.
Another interesting feature in most homes of the Victorian era was the "Trunk Room". This was a large closet usually located at the top of the house and used for the storage of the big steamer trunks and hat boxes required for traveling.
@@jonathantan2469 Um, no. There were usually no rods for hanging clothes. Victorians had enormous wooden trunks that had to be stored when not in use. Fun fact, you can estimate the age of such trunks by the shape of the lid. Early versions had flat lids. They were stack up in freight cars, and the ones on the bottom get ruined. So, manufacturers started to shape lids in ever-increasing curves to limit stacks.
Loved this video, and the shout-out for more closed rooms. I love the idea of being able to have some privacy when another household member has guests over (and eliminating the echoing of noise is also a huge benefit)
Amen to that echoing comment! Never have liked open concept. Would rather close off my kitchen. No one wants to hear me clanging pans and running water-TV volume gets louder and louder so they can hear! Let’s get real, it’s all about the TV. IF I’m entertaining, get out of my kitchen! 😂
Nobody is mentioning them accommodating the luxury of being able to go into the most functional places in your house with the curtains open when you are not dressed for the day. Having such closed rooms on the outside wall prevents people from seeing inside, when you are not presentable. BTW, I don't see what is wrong with giving them curtains instead of doors.
Besides eliminating the need for transom windows, electric lighting made it possible to easily produce more elaborate meals after dark. Before electric lighting, the main meal of the day was typically at mid-day. Some people still call the mid-day meal dinner because of that.
We used the term "dinner" to signify the largest or main meal of the day. Therefore at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, or whenever we were having a large group of people in to eat, it was called Christmas/Thanksgiving/Easter DINNER. We usually had a larger meal in the evening on normal days when Dad go home from working in the fields. The other term used for the evening meal was supper and the midday meal woud called lunch.
Interesting. My grandmother who grew up on a farm during the Depression explained what the difference between the noon meal being called lunch or dinner. If they made food and took it to the workers in the fields it was lunch. If they cooked a meal and the workers came to house to eat, It was Dinner. Thanks for the other insight.
@@twincast2005 Well for the most part many Americans only get a 30 minute lunch break. Especially those of us in service or construction jobs. Personally breakfast is my main meal and anything after that is a bonus.
I lived in a house that had a laundry elevator. The elevator could be used to transport dirty laundry to the basement and then clean laundry back to the upstairs. The elevator was powered by a hand crank that was very easy to turn. Using the elevator was safer and easier than carrying a laundry basket up and down stairs.
Lucid Dreamer, I had a great aunt who had the “laundry elevator”. Back in this day people of means had them in their homes and they were called dumb waiters. I got in trouble for playing in it as a child.
Wall anchors are still in use in Czechia for mine areas. Where whole villages are undermined and ground is sinking slowly. Purpose is to make the house to sink as one object. If you do not have these, one wall may sink faster and rip your house in half (I saw it when my friend's bathroom moved 20 cm from the rest of the house.)
You’ll hear it in some Victorian-era houses that have architectural niches built into the wall of the staircase landing. The story goes that these niches were called “coffin corners.” Someone might explain that, because most people died at home in their beds and because most bedrooms were upstairs, it was difficult to get the casket up and down the stairs when the staircase turned a corner. So at the landing, Victorian architects would cut a niche into the wall. The pallbearers would insert one corner of the coffin into the niche and make the turn at the landing. Part of this is true: people did tend to die at home and the bedrooms of larger homes did tend to be located on the second or third floors. And many Victorian homes do have niches built into the wall of the staircase. But these were for decorative purposes: to display a statue, perhaps a bust, or a vase, or maybe flowers. Why would anyone carry a coffin upstairs to the corpse rather than carry the corpse downstairs to the coffin? Most books about Victorian architecture debunk this myth. For example, John Maass calls it a hoax in The Victorian Home in America (1972).
A lot of those homes have coffin doors as well - a secondary 'front door' so to speak. You don't have the living go in and out of the same door as the dead. The Victorians had a lot of death superstitions. The dead were always carried out feet first so they could not lure others to follow them to the afterworld by looking them.
Around the victorian time period they had books of the dead or recently deceased and viewing rooms ( a special room in the house to put the coffin in to allow people to pay their last respects to the dead (this was before the rise of funeral homes)
@@erin7231 That’s right, they had the living room and a parlour. If your family member died they would be cleaned and prepared and would be kept in the parlour for viewing until it was time to go for the funeral.
My dad was an architect and had house plans from the 1920's. The builder designed the doors and windows and bookcases. It was beautiful craft work which you mostly do not find in today's homes with standard doors and windows and cabinets you buy from big box stores.
My great aunt had a 1920s house that had a summer house in the back. She used to can food there during the hot summer months, the "house" itself was merely a screened-in great room, one side used as a kitchen and she kept 3 full size beds on the other side. Only pony walls that went halfway up and screen the rest of the way. There were so many big galvanized canning pots out there. We used to go out there and jump on the beds, big, overstuffed feather beds. Mattress ticking old, smelly and brittle. Funny how those memories are still so vivid.
I’m from PA and it’s true, we love our old homes. I’ve never lived in one newer than 100 years old. I’ve been in newly constructed homes and they’re just not built the same. Not as sturdy, not as much character. Not as much care taken in their construction. Walls are wafer thin, too. I like reading comments on those “Worst Places to Live in PA” and the stock footage usually shows normal neighborhoods here, lol. People comment how old everything looks and guess how cheap the homes must be. How wrong they are!
One item you missed was the breezeway. In the Midwest this would be an enclosed space between the garage and the house. It didn’t have any heat or cooling but all your coats, boots, etc were kept there so that you didn’t bring dirt into the house. I discovered when I moved south that these breezeways were not enclosed. In the hot of the summer, this open space pulled cool air through giving you a cool breeze to keep you cool during hot southern summers.
My neighbors next door bought my aunts house and have one of those still, they redid the whole house after we all flooded twice (Texas we flood a lot ) and kept that breezeway. I haven’t heard that term since my aunt born in 1907 lived there I remember coming back from Kmart and she telling my granny “go in there in the fridge in the breezeway and get us a beer !”
How about the intercom systems ? I sold a house recently with a NuTone that worked until Harvey came - had a radio that broadcast throughout the house and it was great for waking the kids up. I have one here but it stopped working when I was about 6 and my grandma gave up on getting it back to working
As a student in Pittsburgh, PA, I remember renting old houses with “Pittsburgh closets” which is a very shallow narrow closet used back in the day when people had a very few clothes.
I looked at a house here in Ohio that was like that. I think it was built in the late 1800s or early 1900s. One room had shallow closets but a passage between two rooms in one. I thought it was cool, if not totally impractical for today.
Right, the closet isn't deep enough to even use hangers. You hang the clothes on hooks on the back wall. But I suspect that wasn't *all* of their clothing - they still had chests of drawers and armoires, after all.
Visited the Packer Mansion in Jim Thorpe Pa. years back. They mentioned one way houses were taxed was on the size of the closets. The narrow closet was a way of avoiding taxes.
My Grandmother had a house in Queens NY. There were still farms across the street when I was little in the 50's. She had a lot of the features you showed. But one thing she had which was not shown here were vestiges of gas lamps in each room. Where they used to hang were decorative plaster disks on the walls and on the ceilings. They were mysterious looking and used to scare me.
Our kitchen had a kerosene lamp over the kitchen table that could be lowered to be refilled. We also had pump-action "Flit" guns (a brand of insect spray) in the kitchen.
Older homes in California Central valley often had a "vegetable pantry", especially those near enough the delta go get an afternoon breeze. This was a kitchen cabinet with an opening through the roof, and usually a vent on an outside wall, with slatted instead of solid shelves. Another one I can't believe you missed is a ironing board cabinet. Lots of homes built in the 30's and 40's had a wall cabinet inset into the wall, and if you opened it there was a fold out ironing board. In my grandmother's house this was right next to the telephone nook.
My 1920s home in Los Angeles had a vegetable pantry. The pantry was vented to the crawl space under the house and vented to the attic. It was pretty effective at staying cooler than the inside of the house, but it was also gross with bugs and vermin.
In my grandma's house (built in 1939), the ironing board nook was in the kitchen. But the board had been removed, and little knick knack shelves installed in its place. The house had a little milk-delivery door next to the side door. And a coal chute, a root cellar, and a toilet in a closet in the basement---so if anyone was working in the basement, they wouldn't have to go all the way up to the 2nd floor, where the bathroom was.
My friend rented a house here in Galveston that had the ironing board board closet with the ironing board still in it. But the outstanding feature of this house was the little biscuit board ...it pulled out of the cabinet like opening a drawer. Used for rolling out biscuit or pie crusts dough
@@tpickett1381 A few houses I lived in had pull out wooden cutting boards, they were great cuz they were huge, often 24"×30" at least. They pulled all the way out for cleaning or oiling
I heard these were called “California coolers” (I’m assuming that’s where the 80’s wine coolers got their name). Lived in a 1920s house with a pantry that vented through the side of the house (opening covered in mesh under wood slats )
I remember asking my parents about the slit in the medicine cabinet. They had never noticed it. When we pulled the cabinet out for painting, it had a couple of razors behind it. My fist house was in a neighborhood built in the '50s, and almost all the houses had coal doors. We also had the phone nook, where we kept our landline phone until we got rid of it. The slot underneath was meant to hold the 3" thick phone books that were once delivered annually to every house.
I don't think razor slits are quite as old-fashioned as he makes them out to be. I had an apartment with one in a building that was built in the early 80s according to the landlord. Forty-odd years is a fair time, but not back to iceboxes and root cellars.
In 1975 my parents bought their first house that was built in the late 1800’s. When my dad started remodeling we found a bunch a odd things hidden behind those old walls. I really miss that old house!
Its all relative i suppose. There is a saying "Americans think 100 years is a long time and Britons think 100 miles is a long way". Its so true. I was astonished by how big America was! Same with age... my house was built in 1850 and is "relatively new". At the bottom of the street they are Georgian from between 1780 and 1820 ish. There are two pubs, one is from the 1700s and the other from 1580. My village is in "The Doomsday Book" (so older than 1086, probably 8th century) I thought that was old... However I went to Rome and went to a restaurant that was built in the 4th century!!!
Ahhh the nostalgia! I grew up in an old home that has sadly been torn down. We had the laundry chute, phone nook, push button light switches and servant stairs. I initially wanted the servant room to be mine because I thought it would be sooo cool to have a sink in my room...I opted for the room with 2 closets though.
The fact that phone jacks are considered “mysterious” and I’m only 29 years old and remember having/using them in several rooms in our houses growing up makes me feel ancient. 😫
The last apt. we rented had jacks everywhere. When we moved into our home in 95 landlines were still a thing. Guess what? No Jack in the kitchen! Made me crazy.
Since the 90's, technology has started moving exponentially faster. In 5 years, we will live in a completely new world technologically. This feeling of being "ancient" because of new tech is going to be happening a lot more frequently with the rise of AI usage for innovation. In other words, you aren't that old lol
As someone with a 1950s home with 2 (formerly 3) pocket doors, I can understand why they're not common. They're hard to replace and repair. Sometimes you can get by just removing all the trim but other times you'll need to open up the wall if the track inside becomes damaged. As they age, it can be a real headache. Plus, latching or locking them securely has limited options that are usually finicky.
I assume they use the same rollers and tracks as sliding closet doors, which are always getting out of adjustment. Adjusting those things in a pocket door could be a real hassle unless access panels for such adjustments are designed into the envelope.
They are almost always designed without easy access. I have a couple in my home that we do not use because of adjustment issues. I really do not feel like removing walls
I lived in a 1900s Victorian home for some years and it had a neat feature at the door. There was a speaking tube which lead upstairs to a bedroom in which voice could travel. The home was previously used as a doctor's office and in turn patients may come at night to contact the doctor. It had also the open window frames on top of doors to allow the passage of air fr heating and cooling. Loved that house : )
I’ve lived in houses with Pittsburgh toilets, milk doors, picture rails, coal shoots, laundry shoots, and push button light switches that still worked great. My dad installed intercoms in our house when he built it in the ‘60s - very modern LOL
I’ve grown up in homes and apartments with all of those items. I really enjoy when a house, apartment or building still has a touch of its history intact.
Hey Rhetty, here is an arcane feature for you. Many old, well built, homes in Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis had rock-stone foundations. Did you ever wonder why? Well, houses in these areas often had high water tables throughout much of the year. If the area got soggy you would have a wet basement, but a dry house. Also, many Europeans were stone craftsmen. So these guys could shape and cement stones together. So it was an employment opportunity. But, finally, the soils in these areas had large rocks and limestone rock ledges. When you wanted to build a nice house you would hire a crew of diggers to make your footprint. Since there was a pile of stones in what would become a front yard, the next job was to wash what stone was dug out. Then the masons would cut and fit the stones into a basement walls. Today engineering techniques have been invented to keep these old house basements intact, for future generations.
My parents old house in NY was built in the late 1800’s and it had a stone foundation. Our house was the first one built on that block. It had a big beautiful stone wall that was seven feet high. It is still in great shape along with the foundation of the house. They knew how to build things that would last back then.
@@GhosstRyder Actually no. Architects did NOT know how to build stone houses and there were many failures since the stones were a pile made into a pyramid shape. It was not until about 1940 that architects had to invent the inverted (up side down) Tee. A pyramid just keeps slicing into the soil like a spade, over decades. A tee-base never moves. Today in St Louis many of these old homes are having sections of the walls dug out and then supported with concrete pads.
@@MrMockingbird1313 Thank you. Our old house was built very well. We are still in contact with the new owners and everything is still holding up well. My dad and Nonna (Italian for grandpa) were both stone masons. They did Beautiful work throughout the NY area. Those skills seem to be lost now because kids today are all glued to their computers. My dad passed away when my boys were very young so unfortunately he didn’t teach them that skill but they have other very useful ones. I have an electrician and my older one installs high speed garage doors for businesses and large buildings.
@@GhosstRyder Excellent information. One HUGE difference is the soil content. In this part of the Mississippi valley the soil can turn to mush with a small earth tremor. Soil back east is much more stable. That is why the pyramid vs. the inverted tee makes so much difference.
Kitchens in houses built in the 1920s had narrow closets containing fold-out ironing boards. You still see them in Tom & Jerry cartoons. When I was growing up in the ‘70s, people still had metal containers on their porches for milk and dairy deliveries-rusted and long unused even back then. Window seats and radiators were also a lot more common, and every high rise apartment building had fire escapes. Roofs had TV aerials, and backyards had cellar doors and clotheslines before tumble dryers were common.
I still love hanging my clothes out. They actually need less ironing as the wind keep flapping them around and the wrinkles many times disappear. Boy do they smell great to (if you don't have a ton of air pollution in your area and given your neighbor doesn decide that is the time they are going to burn their trash or spead menure on the fields, LOL!)
If you currently live on a homestead, a root cellar is very handy to store your root vegetables. People are actually building root cellars much like the one showed in the video. Someday soon, we may be regretting how dependent we’ve become on the grocery store
My house is 110 years old. After I renovated I found out that one hallway closet had a floor drain that went all the way into the basement plumbing and the plumber told me that this drain was to collect the melted ice from the ice box which used to sit in that closet.
I've been in old homes that had an ironing board in the wall and had a little door to keep it from view. The transom window above the front door is a great idea for extra light.
We had the ironing board that was tucked into its own little closet in the house I grew up in. I wonder why we don't have things like that now. I'm sure people still iron their clothes and it would be easier than pulling out the one that stands up on it own or the one that sits on the table - since both need someplace to store them.
@@hlltwin Most people just buy clothes that don't need pressing. They also can throw it back into the dryer with a damp towel to get out wrinkles. Lots of people just take clothes that need ironing to a laundry mat to have them wash and press for them.
@@KnittyKitty215 buy clothes don’t need ironing? All clothes need ironing, even tshirts look wrinkly and need ironed. Are you suggesting people don’t own irons??? That’s like such a basic appliance. We use our iron multiple times a week, how could people not have one? Especially if you have to wear button up shirts, they always need ironed.
When I was a child, I lived in a very old farm house in Maine that had "Indian Blinds" set in the window frame. Useful for defense in about 1700 when early settlers were taken hostage by Native Americans and held for ransom. The heavy wooden blinds pulled across from the sides to prevent arrows entering, and there was a small cut-out area for shooting a gun through. Was interested to see that I recognized most of the items from this video.
@@kh3612 I would never have thought of them as "common" but it is fair to say that I also lived in another very old house in the Boston area that had them. I was unaware of a previous mention, so I am remiss for repeating information.
This video solved the mystery of my basement toilet! I never really questioned it before, but knowing it's purpose is fascinating. Makes sense, seeing as my neighborhood was built when the former steel mill nearby was the main employer.
I recently renovated and redesigned my new home, which had an open-plan living room and dining area. So, I built a diving wall and installed a pair of 15-panel, glass, "pocket doors", which operate in tandem when either is slid open or shut. Apart from saving on floor space and the unnecessary heating of an unused room, they are a very attractive and cool feature that still allows daylight to flood through. Additionally, the built-in, soft-close, damper mechanism prevents them from clattering together.
We turned ours into first a designated homework zone when we were kids (having a spot where all your school stuff lives helps with the morning scramble and prevents lost homework!) and later into a charging area/print station.
I'm glad you included root cellars! I lived in a house in NH built in the 1700s, and we had two basements: the regular one (with sealed off brick ovens and a sand "floor") and the root cellar. Mom was a teacher and every summer when she'd get a summertime bonus, she'd load up on groceries (for a BIG family) and store most of it down there. It was always pleasantly cool in the cellar, since it had a northern exposure. We also had a second staircase, that originally was meant for the help to use instead of the big, main staircase.
Plenty of new homes in Canada, to this day, are built with a root cellar under the front porch. However, they are more commonly called “fruit cellars”.
OMG.... 1700s ??? There is no way most buildings built today would last 250+ years. Unless you have the home built it for yourself, Many builders often cut corners and skimp on quality. Look at how many 50 -60 year old high-rises have been demolished to start over... ( Just search RUclips for *building demolition* .... there are demo experts who can make a building collapse in on it self in the middle of a city.... great fun to watch.) I think I'll head over to one now.....
We lived way out in the country and had both a milk and bread man. The milkman, named Henry, would bring the milk right into the house (nobody locked their door) Our German Sheppard would bark her head off EVERYTIME, even though she knew him and what he was there for. The bread man would just stay in the truck and honk his horn, to avoid the dog. This bread man had the best cream filled doughnuts that I have ever had in my life. I remember seeing the little slit in the medicine cabinet and being surprised that this is where you place your razors after use. I always wondered where they ended up. Pretty weird when you think about it. Thank you for this really fun video !!
I'm sure it got mentioned somewhere in these comments, but I would add that many of the larger old homes in my area have some sort of roof vent above the central stairs. This would be anything from a simple cupola to a large Greenhouse style skylight. On hot days they would open this up and strategically open lower windows. Of course this was before air conditioning. I was shocked at how affective this system was. Between the siphon effect and heat rising out the breeze at the top of the stairs would blow back your hair!
LIke they say, necessity is the mother of invention. They HAD to have some way to cool those mansion/mammoth homes! Now a days, when you don't have A/C the achieve much the same effect with attic fans, even on single level homes!
A lot of traditional houses in Japan are tall with skinny rooms. In the hot, humid summers the entire house acts like a chimney with the hot air rising into the rafters and out the vents while pulling cool air in through the lower windows. The ancient technology works so well that AC is still rare in Japanese houses. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
With the Victorian house we once lived in, the Tower was the highest "room." Alongside what was Grandmother's was a room (NE corner of house) that was separated by a wall of casemate windows. It took me YEARS of thinking about it, until I realized that the 'window' room was a COOL room, and with the tower up high, and the right windows and doors open, it would work exactly as you describe! WONDERFUL!!
@@mister-v-3086 Kind of the same for me. I had repaired a bunch of skylights and they're always up high and most of the time above stairs and thought why would they put them up here? One time on a hot day, I got it, I could feel the wind whipping out of the house through the skylight from the lower levels. I finally understood and thought it was so interesting.
There is a mansion in Savannah that has such a cupola fitted with a ring of gaslights. The flames created a forced draft. I suppose it was built in the late 1800's.
My grandparents had a home with most of the really old stuff. The transom windows truly worked magic on a hot summer day/night without the cost of electricity. And, pocket doors are amazing!
A feature you missed were the heat registers between floors. I lived in a home built in the late 1800's that had metal grates in the ceiling on the ground floor, and the floor above. They allowed heat from the first floor to rise up.
I have a grate in one of my upstairs bedroom floors but somebody in the past redid the ceiling on the lower floor and closed off the hole but they were at least smart enough to leave the upper grate behind
I had those in my house when I moved in. I still have the grates, but I covered the holes while remodeling. I still have 3 large pocket doors. Another thing that I used to see around my town was posts by the street where people could tie off their horses.
I took out an unused chimney in my 1930's house and used the space for a laundry chute to the basement. It has a horizontal hatch at the top and a door on the main floor that stays closed. No issues with the inspectors, but if needed, I can also put a spring-loaded steel door at the bottom. It's a lot safer than carrying laundry baskets down stairs. And no, I've never had any clothes get stuck.
Opening transoms are extremely helpful in multizone minisplit air conditioner houses. They allow a room (like bath or bedroom) without a head unit to get conditioned air while the door is closed.
Houses may be built with "jumper ducts" that provide the airflow of a transom, although no light. My house here in Arizona has no individual room return ducts to the HVAC, but has jumper ducts instead that return air to the main part of the house where the main return is in the ceiling, going straight to the HVAC in the attic.
@@oldtvnut transoms are difficult with low ceilings and 7ft doors. However refit louvers in interior doors often look tacky. Return ducts are great, but often the multi minisplit is installed to avoid putting ducts in old construction. If ducting a house anyway, the obvious question is....then why not just install central? Now an alternative I have considered is to put historic vents in the wall or over doors. No light but they look like stove or big BBQ dampers. Typically iron, ornate and circular with a sliding damper.
Oh rhett! That was incredibly fun since I have had the privilege of living in homes that had every one of the features. It was so much fun to grow up with these then modern features. I enjoyed every one of them and they make great conversation pieces! Thanks again
They do make great conversation pieces and I think that is really neat that you have experienced all of these first hand. Some of them I have only experienced thru home tours. Thank you for watching!
Yes, pocket doors really should make a comeback! The house I currently live in is the same one I grew up in, with pocket doors between the front and back parlors. The house was built in the very early 1800s and, unlike Victorian-era pocket doors, the doors were not hung from above. Instead, they glide on a thin metal rail nailed to a low, rounded wooden threshold. I've always thot that was a better idea than hanging the doors, since less can go wrong!
I once lived in a house that had a horrible folding door installed in a normal doorway. A 1960s, accordion-folding, temporary wall, sized for a standard doorway. It never stayed shut and took up 1/3 of the doorway when folded.
I never found a pocket door that worked. They had a nasty habit of warping while inside the wall. If they make a comeback, they should be made of something other than wood.
@@FeedScrn I haven't seen a pocket door made since the 1980s that had issues with warping. It's just not a thing any more. Most interior doors are just a few strips of plywood with a paper honeycomb core and some laminated cardboard glued to them. I mean I get where you're coming from and that is definitely an issue with pocket doors in houses from say the 1930s or 1920s, but anything built in the past 50 years or so? Not really. Unless it was built incredibly poorly.
The Pittsburg toilet was installed for allowing sewer backups to occur in the basement rather than in the finished area of the house (the intent was not for coal workers -- though it almost certainly ended up being used for that).
@@Fiery154 Well no, you have to understand all the toilets in a house are connected to a single large sewage pipe that then connects to municipal sewage or septic. But with pipes things can go both ways. If the first opening of the pipe is on the upper floor then anything that comes up will come up there and it also makes it much harder to access and unclog the system. This is why toilets have water in the bowl, the S bend / S trap prevents sewage gas from escaping the pipe. Sinks also have these traps to prevent gas.
More likely in older houses built without indoor plumbing. When the home got indoor toilet and didn't want to remove a bedroom to install a bathroom. My grandparents' house was like that>>full bath put in the basement.
My dad still calls it the ice box. He’s 78. Personally I like the old houses. I lived in a house in Salem MA that was built in 1793. We lived there for 6 years and it was great.
Our first house was built in 1967. It had a laundry chute from the upstairs bathroom to a large tub that sat right beside the washing machine. My wife and I loved that thing.
BTW, that old wiring you showed is nicknamed “knob & tube” wiring and was a great design, but over the years people would inadviseably splice in new circuits thus overloading the wiring with too many amps which caused fires).
@@ArtStoneUS insulation didnt cause any issues but badly done connections would. The wire itself is very good and durable stuff. Its the way it was connected that is bad. They did not use wire nuts to hold connections TIGHT, instead, they often just wrapped one wire around another that was passing thru. That is a horrid way to connect, and it can arc especially when it gets old and oxidized.
In 1980 friend inherited an old photographic studio that had really old wiring from the 1920s, when he decided to try using it there was a small explosion as a length of wire was blown out of the wall.
My house still has knob & tube. Although it been replaced and not used, My work shop still has it, And is used just for lights. Walls been rewired for tools. Use to have a 2 prong power strip that ran all ways round the wall,
Add built-in vacuum systems to the list! I lived in a house that had one, it was madly loud but pretty convenient, the only scary thing was opening the wall covers to the hose connector activated the vacuum every time
my aunt had one of those central vacuum things put in and I hated it. Especially when my mum decided she wanted one in their house too. I hated having to use it so I left it to her. They also had intercoms installed which were fun at first, but ultimately useless bc they rarely worked properly. I don't remember when we stopped bothering with them and just hollered up/down the stairs at each other again lol Our first house in the UK was actually one half of what had once been the local manor house (Georgian era; it had been split into 2 council houses in the 1970s and then sold off in the 80s), and still had remnants of the servants' bell pull cords hidden under the carpeting upstairs. Unfortunately the carpets also hid woodworm so it all had to be taken out and replaced. Outside the front door had the boot scraper thing too but we never used it. We had been renovating/restoring it back to what it might have looked like originally, but had to move and sell it, and from what I was told, the new owners ripped it all out. *gutted* They even ripped out my beautiful garden and the roses, and just... left it. I don't understand people who do that...
I'm kind of interested in having one. I heard of one crazy dude who arranged it to just blow the dust out into the back yard - the dust was out of the house, no flow restricting HEPA filters, and no bag emptying etc. I'm not quite that brave, however having it do strait into an outside bin could be handy - never touch dust again.
@@paulstubbs7678 You need to plan it with the building. To add it later is an expensive option, the channels have to go downwards only, lot of brickwork needed. The one couple i know to have one, he wanted it, she hates it. It is so silent so she has the impression it doesn't work. Also if you suck some valuable good, you have to search the whole bin, not only the little bag.
I thought the whole point of those things was that they were quiet. The unit was usually placed in the basement or out in the garage so all you heard in the house was the suction.
Growing up on the east coast of FL, I was familiar with a property that had a huge hunting lodge dating back to the early 1900's. It had one of those 'secret stairways' hidden inside a wall, with both upper & lower access further camouflaged as closet walls. It was quite steep & narrow, but due to the very high ceilings of the lower level, there was easily room for 20 or 25 people in there if you crowded in. According to local lore, the remotely located lodge became a popular brothel for several years back in the 40's. It is said that whenever there was word of an impending raid by the law, the ladies & patrons would conceal themselves inside the wall on the hidden staircase & wait until the authorities were all upstairs, before sneaking down & out of the back service door, and then quickly dispersing into the surrounding swampland.
I once toured a lovely craftsman style home in the Altadena, CA area. The kitchen had a vented cabinet with mesh shelves. The natural circulation of air from crawlspace to the attic cooled the cabinet contents.
My parents rented a small bungalow house in Pasadena that had that too, my mom used to keep the butter in there, it kept it at an easily spreadable temperature.
During my childhood, we lived in a beautiful over 100 years old farm house. Loved the pocket doors. Our coal chute was designed to not just allow the coal to chute into the house but to allow the buckets of coal ash to be hoisted out. My parents poured the ash onto the driveway. It worked great to keep mud and dust down. Also didn't have to pay for rock lol. However, as a kid, it wasn't pleasant to cross when barefoot and you sure didn't want to fall on it when running and playing lol. But I think houses today should also bring back the beautiful handcrafted built in China cabinets and bookcases.
We used to hide down in the coal chute when the tornado sirens went off growing up! That house also had beautiful built in buffets and drawers in the walls! Wonderful house!
My parents' house (built 1941) had a plug on the living room wall by the baseboard. It connected to an antenna that ran under the floorboards of the attic; they could hook up the radio to it. (The 1940s equivalent of a cable TV connection.) The house also came with double concrete laundry tubs in the basement, one of which had a built-in washboard. Back then, laundry might still be done by hand; the tub with the washboard was for washing, and the tub next to it was for rinsing. Really luxurious versions had three tubs: wash, rinse, and rinse again.
attached to the rinse tub would be a wringer to squeeze out the excess water before hanging the clothes on the line. Today we've become used to our automatic washers that spin out the excess water.
@@karenryder6317 I remember Mom's tub washer, which had a power wringer on top. She caught her fingers in it more than once, which wasn't a pleasant experience.
@@jenniferp1917 Exactly! My mom never let me near hers, but I did use a hand-cranked wringer at the YMCA to wring the water out of my swimsuit (sort of a proto-suit spinner).
I remember living in an old home as a child and it had an ironing board that came out from the wall with room inside there to keep an iron. It also had a built-in electric heater in the bathroom wall. Some lights were turned on and off with a string hanging from the bulb and the toilet was flushed with a chain. Bread boards were built into all countertops when I was a child. Dough was rolled out on it but it was also used as a cutting board for all foods. No one had a separate cutting board for meat.
Yes, i have seen ironing boards in the walls of many Chicago-style bungalows, they were fun and very convenient. I would say, bring this feature back, it is just not too many people are ironing anything now.
Cupboards with built-in bread boards are still very common in the new houses in northern Europe. But definitely it is good idea only to cut bread on it and use a separate cutting board(s) for other stuff.
I once tried to rent a historic house that had its very own 'Present Wrapping Room'. Yes that's right a whole room dedicated to wrapping presents. You don't see that feature very often.
@@alexanders3963 Goodness me! I just Googled 'Present Wraping Room' and there are pages and pages of interior designs for them in the USA. Who knew? We don't have them now in the UK (well OK maybe Russian oligarch houses do). That house I looked at though was very old and very unusual. It had its own room sized security vault, a ghost and I had to open it to the public two days a year as a condition of renting. Needless to say, I passed.
I lived in a couple of apts in southern California that had mail drops inside by the front door, covered by an ornate metal door. Liked those a lot. Especially the ease of retrieval of your mail.
I owned a house built in 1897 that had some very cool things throughout it. There was this tiny 'room' on the 2nd floor with an oval shaped window and yes it had a door. I was never able to sort out just what that room was to be used for....Thanks for the great video. Personally I like old houses better than newer ones, especially the amazing woodwork in them.
I lived in San Francisco,.... and there was a tiny room too on the second floor , but they called it the fainting room. Women would pass out after climbing the stairs in their tight corsets, and needed a place to rest,... hence the name fainting room.
I lived in an older home that had a small narrow room (with a door) that was called a rocking room. A room to rock a crying baby while the grown ups talked out in the parlor.
my house had a small room the size if a closet, but with a large windiw in it. During some remodeling, I removed the trim from around the door. On the back of the trim, the carpenter had written "sewing room" in pencil in order to keep track of which doorway it had been cut to fit.
I have seen many of these things, but the question I always had was how they would empty the razor blade slots you answered my question, they don't. Thanks for this very interesting video Rhetty
My late parents built a house around 1939 that had that feature. You'd unbolt the medicine cabinet, and dump out the used blades that were kept in a metal tray.
Remodeler here, I’ve ran into this quite often. The back of the med cabinet would have a slot, sometimes I would find hundreds of blades laying in the stud cavity, only way to get to them is to completely open the wall all the way to the studs.
Yes it just collects and collects. Sometimes they are stuck behind the cabinet or are down at the bottom of the wall. Other times they are all the way on the ground. It can also be a mix. Thank you for watching!
O very cool.. I live in Texas where I've seen just about all of these always wondered what that slot was for in the medicine cabinet!!!! Neato mosquito!!!
But who thought that was a good thing?!? Talk about denial....out of sight is out of mind?!? Crazy they didn't think that through! It isn't even like they would degrade or something, just wow!
I still use the old boot scraper outside my house (plus a large old nail to get the mud from the treads of my boots). They are still good for the outdoorsy people. Also, I installed pocket doors in my home (having known about them from the old house I grew up in). I’m also having them installed in the new house I’ve designed.
If the starship Enterprise can have pocket doors, why not modern homes? Now if we could just get the automatic door sensors and actuators to work better than a Star Trek blooper reel, we'd be in clover.
Thanks!
You're welcome and thank you for watching! I appreciate the super chat too.
This is a must-see viewer for time travellers venturing through the north american server!
I grew up in an old house that had windows that were raised and lowered using weights and rope. Seems like the rope was encased in the window frame. Does anyone else remember windows like that?
I lived in a house that had those as well. We had the windows replaced with modern ones because the old ones were drafty. I remember them cutting the ropes and you could hear the thud from the weights. I crawled up underneath and got the weights. Thank you for watching and sharing another old forgotten way of having windows.
We had these. We also had large, sliding, French doors that used the counter weights to open. It felt like the were gliding. Theywent into the walls on either side.
Yes, I lived in a 1930s apartment for 18 years and I still love how well those windows worked and how easily to leave the window how open or closed as you wanted. A simple mechanism that could last forever. Drafty though :)
I never had those but they sound interesting as well. We did have some French doors that swung open complete with the old glass that was wavy from the imperfections.
Our Victorian Farmhouse had those "sash" weights in our windows, we also had a coal chute and bin in our Yankee cellar. Those window were double hung, you could open them at the top and bottom
at the same time and get good air circulation.
I love how you included telephone jacks with all the antique things like ice boxes and coal chutes 🤣.
"shoots"
@@jamesmcinnis208 - Taking it one step further, I was surprised to see the modern telephone jack and not the old "4-prong" telephone jack. :-)
I remember the predecessor to modular phone jacks which had 4 prongs.
I was feeling mighty old after seeing that !
@@jamesmcinnis208 * shutes
Something else that others may remember is an ironing board that could be lowered from a cabinet in the wall, with a stick beneath it for support.
We had that but it was self-supporting. No stick to the ground.
Se still have one!
I have one in my house also!!
I've only seen those in Tom and Jerry
My landlord has multiple apartments in the Home I've cleaned most of them and always look for them. And there are tiny doors everywhere storage piping everything has a cute little door.
I would love to own one of these old houses. I love separate rooms, natural wood, pocket doors and everything in between. Houses looked so warm, elegant and beautiful.
In my town we have so many beautiful historic homes that are crumbling away. It makes me so sad. If I had the money I would love to buy one.
I do love the older homes. Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
@@Littlemom1977 In our local Technical college (now a regular college) they have a degree program in Home Restoration, not renovation) Since the Eastern Ohio Valley and Wheeling WV area has so many homes from the 1800's and early 1900's, people would rather restore the old lathe and plaster walls, and the beautiful wide woodwork, so we have a demand for restorers to bring the old homes back to their historic conditions instead of just throwing drywall up and putting cheap pine modern woodwork in. When we updated our 1907 home, we did upgrade the mechanicals, but the woodwork was kept as stained oak. The interesting thing is we are near Amish areas, and we can buy historic pattern oak woodwork cheaper from there than buy modern painted finger joint pine trim!
Who needs this open concept? I love my brick house built in 1926..solid as a rock, a full basement, and three stories ! Cobblestone driveway that leads to a detached 3 car garage, an acre of land, hardwood floors throughout, laundry chute, stained glass windows! I would never consider living anywhere that was built after 1940! What was built after the war is disgraceful !
@@maryellenquinn5267 "Open Concept" sucks. It was a bastard child of the late 1960s. I think the trend is turning around, now that people want man-caves, craft rooms, home theaters, etc. where they can get away from their spouse or kids.
My Great Aunt use to own a historic home that was part of the Underground Railroad. There were little hiddy holes and secret passages all over the house.
How fascinating! Thanks for sharing!!
Man it sure would suck if you found old remains of slaves that never made it out of that house...
@@IraQNid My Great Aunt died 10-15 years ago and the house is no longer in the family. But they did a full remodel, so there are no bodies in the house. There were blocked up passages that lead to something underground...maybe sewers ort something, I dont remember. Still doubt there would be bodies there but maybe some cool artifacts.
Sometimes you''ll see "priest holes" in old English movies. "Great Aunt" shouldn't be capitalized.
Yes and a lot of those were used for smuggling, not for the Underground Railroad.
I think the picture hooks need to make a comeback for apartments and dorms since we aren’t allowed to nail things in and command strips don’t always work with the wall texture.
Apartments, dorms, and rented houses (specifically public housing).
Problem is repainting the apartments is more costly the more detail you have to avoid. Like how most rentals your inner door frams will always match the wall color.
There's so many layers of paint in some places it's probably decreased the square footage.
It is a great idea. Thank you for watching!
I used packing tape to hang my posters in my dorm room because the walls were painted cinder block
My apartment has picture rails below the crown molding but I imagine most people don’t know what it’s for. The crown molding and picture rails are only in the living room though. It’s kind of neat how they did it. The crown molding, picture rail, and space between it are all white so it looks like one piece.
Have you ever heard of a "snow door"? It usually opened out into nothing. Used to allow people access to the outside when the snow was so high you were "snowed in", you could slide down the high snow to the ground. I had one in Wisconsin.
So that’s what those were for? Cool!
That is interesting. Being in Oklahoma and Texas I have not experienced that. Thank you for watching and sharing that with us.
@@RhettyforHistory Are you an Okie? I'll sub if so!
I see those sometimes and had now idea what they were for, they just looked dangerous.
Don’t forget the wood chutes for getting chopped wood 🪵 inside the kitchen!
"Landline telephones used to be an essential form of communication." Okay, well cheers for making me feel ANCIENT at 51 years old, Rhetty for History!!
🙂LOL. I’m 52 and can laugh with you about this one. I remember in the mid-late 70’s when you could have two lines/phone numbers on your landline phone, and the base of the phone had a little turn-switch to select which phone number/line you were answering or calling from. At the time it was pretty cool.
If it is any consolation, I have also felt ancient at 42!! It seems like yesterday I was calling my school friends on the phone, dialing their number.
We still have one too, in the kitchen which is great when the power goes down, that landline still works!
Two words.. "party lines", also known as sharing a (landline) phone line with 3-6 of your closest nosy neighbors, who would sometimes listen to your phone calls. As kids, we were sometimes guilty of listening in too. ;) It was the only way you could have a phoneline in the house at that time.. it was a while before rural towns got enough wiring/back-end support so each house could have its own private phone line. I can remember my mom wanting to use the phone once for something semi-important and the worst of the town gossips had been monopolizing the line for some time. Mom finally picked up our phone and interrupted the call to tell Carrie Mae in no uncertain terms to hang up the damn phone NOW so someone else could get a word in. :D
"And some had even special little pockets near the coat hangers; they were used to put your beeper after coming home" Hahahaha!
I love to see old homes. They were usually crafted with so much love and care. Not to mention it was meant to last!
There’s certainly a lot more old-growth wood in older homes, but survivor bias will always make past construction seem sturdier than new construction since only the well-built and maintained examples will remain from any era of the built environment.
Some don't realize and/or appreciate that when you see an old farmhouse that has the decorative wood ornamentation on the porches. Usually along the railing poles. That fancy woodwork was all hand made, in the yard, in front of the house while it was being built.
@@millicentduke6652 That is an excellent point Millicent! Did you coin the phrase "survivor bias"?
But not all old homes that were built to last were built with love and care. Some were built sturdy but not purdy.
@@nankerphelge3771 I seem to remember seeing the phrase elsewhere, suspect it is somewhat common in statistical usage.
A feature on older homes built along the coastline, and often mistaken for a rooftop patio is a "widow's walk", they were used as a high vantage point overlooking the water so that the wives of sailors and fishermen could spot the boats of their husbands coming in to port.
I used long line off of Long Island, and the northern parts of OBX.
Can confirm.
Cape May, NJ has a lot of them.
The TV show ‘Bob’s Burgers’ has an episode involving a Widow’s Walk. The character Linda is convinced that the homeowner was murdered by his wife when she loosened a rail on the widow’s walk, and pushed her husband into the rail, sending him to his death. The perfect accident/murder!
There is zero evidence to support this usage. It was a common feature of homes built in that style of architecture. Originating in Italy iirc.
Why would they need to do that? Other people just get a knock at the door when the person arrives
The reason the laundry chute is no longer a thing is because it's illegal in many jurisdictions as it is a fire hazard. You will note that most homes now (with the exception of the stairwell) try to block air from moving from floor to floor except in fireproof ducts. In the event of a fire of the house would catch fire very quickly from floor to floor with a laundry chute
Ah, that makes sense. I did not think about that and now I'm amazed that people are putting them in. Makes me how many have done it despite the laws in certain areas. Thank you for watching and educating us about that.
Yes, laundry could get caught mid-chute. You can imagine having that problem and needing to get it out. A big pile of stuck laundry could pose as a fire hazard, as you mentioned.
@@grumpyoldwizard the fire hazard isn't stuck laundry, it's the air flow.
@@grumpyoldwizard It's more about how readily fire can move from floor to floor then stuck laundry... This is also the reason why you will now find blocks placed between floors in houses now, whereas they used to use what is called balloon construction which provides fire passage from floor to floor. This is one of the reasons why it's harder to wire houses now after the walls are closed in
@@RhettyforHistory Very interesting! I can see why they're not used anymore, though the hobby engineer in me can't help but wonder if there's a way to make one that's fire-safe, because they sure are handy!
I remember back in the mid to late 90s, viewing a house with a friend and his parents that had one of those intercom systems. Not only could you call to different rooms from the kitchen or living room (where the main panel would have been), but many models came with AM/FM radio and some even had 8-track players or turntables, so you could have music playing throughout the entire house while entertaining, relaxing, or doing housework. They ended up buying the house.
My grandma's house had one of those. It played 8 tracks. But it didn't work very well. My grandparents never bothered getting it fixed.
I definitely remember touring some new home subdivisions in the early 90s. The model homes featured intercoms with just AM/FM, but I thought it was so cool.
My father had a house built in the late 1960s with an inter on which was connected to AM/FM & Reel-to-reel tape system. There was also a small chute in back of the fireplace that led outside, making it easier to shovel the ashes out. I loved that when it was my turn to clean the thing!
A neighbor had this in her house!
@@samantha2573 I'd forgotten my grandparents had this feature too! theirs dumped into the basement, but it still kept ash from getting scattered all over the carpet. Cleaning fireplaces is no neat matter. They also had the intercom/radio system, which stopped working at some point, but they never used it much anyway. I imagine it was a sneaky way to listen in on the kids.
I'm surprised that pocket doors did not become the norm for home interiors. They free up so much floor space and have a neater, cleaner look. I've lived in homes that had them, and loved 'em.
Yes, pocket doors are fantastic! They would particularly benefit small apartments...
I love pocket doors
Yeah, but they also mean ripping out the whole wall when they get stuck.
A kid throws a ball in the house and a hinged door gets damaged? go to Lowes and find a replacement that's easy to pop in. Paint it any color you like, and just paint over that when you change your mind. But refinishing a pocket door means taking off the molding and sanding it to bare wood, or risking painting it shut, not covering the old color, or bumping it off track. And God help you if it gets off it's track or the cat bats a small rock into it and it won't open or close the whole way...
@@mwater_moon2865 Yeah, they do have drawbacks, but I still like 'em.
@@mwater_moon2865 Thank you, yes! Pocket doors are the bane of my existence.
I lived in a house that had a "summer kitchen." Apparently it was a secondary kitchen that was only used during the summertime because the heat from the wood stoves would be unbearable in the main kitchen. The summer kitchen had large doors and windows that could be opened to allow for additional ventilation.
Florida?
That's still common here in the coutryside even with modern technology. They have more space for it to be built, it's larger and usually chaotic and it's hidden from guests while the unused spotless main kitchen is guest friendly.
@@christinebrooke7292 I live in Florida, never seen one. But wouldn't be surprised. Not sure if it would make a difference though, the heat can be unbearable even with open windows from all the humidity.
I saw that on a farmhouse in Macon, Georgia, years ago, but it was the only kitchen to the house. The house was L-shaped and you had to access the kitchen by stepping out from the parlor onto a long back porch. I assumed it was because of the summer heat. Not a problem here in the mountains of Wyoming.
I lived in house built in the last century that was/is still heated by a wood stove-in the kitchen. That would be normal if it was used as a cook stove also! Talk about hot! I never used the the gas oven in the winter , unless I wanted to faint! 🙄☄️ the person used it to replace propane heat. Good idea but what a lot of work. Always opening/closing windows, doors. Glad I finally got out of there for good!🤒😓🥵
Seems like all the small doors for deliveries could be one item on the list.
Also, it would be a fine idea to bring these back for package deliveries to block theft
That'd be fine for small packages, but anything larger becomes a potential entry point.
@@xaenon It could be an opening with both sides locked, like the ice delivery door mentioned in the video.
@@xaenon it would have to be designed for the largest standard Amazon box, and be built to allow things to go in but then not be accessible from the outside, and then make it so you have to open a door from the inside of the house to get the package.
But then I think of why this would be outlawed immediately. Someone could get stuck in the package compartment after coming in from either side.
@@watsonwrote Yes, but you better build it at least as sturdy as the front door. those hinges won't hold up for more than a half-dozen good kicks.
The different types of doors were for every different things though and they didn't look at all alike, at least once opened. It wasn't uncommon to see houses with multiple ones. One place I lived had a (disused) "coal door" (rather than a hopper - it just opened straight onto a slide to the bin, and was short and set very low to the ground), a hatch for milk deliveries, and a panel covering up where the ice door had been. You definitely didn't want the wrong thing going it the wrong door, but I suppose which led to what was obvious to delivery folks of the day.
I'm surprised you mentioned intercoms, but not speaking tubes.
A friend's house had these, and since there were no moving parts to fail, they still used them frequently.
Hard to talk privately?
@@Axlotl77 Not really. You had to speak into them quite loudly to be heard.
I used to shout at my sister through the vents, close enough
@@handuo6301 My late Grandpa would have the TV in the basement cranked up super loud. Sometimes I’d listen in to the news through the vent from the second floor.
@@ryanbrown8527 I think that was their point. Lol
I agree with bringing back pocket doors and transoms. One is a space saver and the other is a beautiful decorative touch.
Yes they are. Thank you for watching!
I was in a house built in the 60's...all the bedroom doors were pocket doors.
What people don't get is that a lot of this old stuff doesn't work anymore. We have transoms. Good luck finding the hardware to work it.
Pocket doors are a headache they don't stay adjusted then they hang wrong and you have to tear into the jamb to readjust them.
Transoms also cut down on the amount of electric lighting you need in the interior rooms.
I loved my grandparents old house. It was built in 1912 and it was a Sears and Robux assembly home. It had the servant stairs and a lot of these features. I was an 80s baby. So it’s cool to have grown up on these things, and to see that some of them are making a comeback. They were beautiful houses.
My parents house was one of those. It had beautiful woodwork!
That would be Sears and Roebuck.
I 100% agree with the closed floorplan with the option of pocket doors. I live in a part of the world with very cold winters and very hot summers. It is way easier to heat and cool a smaller space. With the increased need for air conditioning this seems like a great idea. I never really liked open plan homes that much. I like small cozy rooms.
I prefer the closed floor plan with pocket doors too.
Yeah I don't like the open floor plan either. I want walls in my house.
Our house also has a few pocket doors. Both bedrooms do, as well as the laundry room. Our house is over 70 years old, and is adobe, so the walls are very thick---over 2 feet in most areas. (Jan Griffiths).
Open floor plans are🤮.
Seriously! Why did people ever stop making these?
The "old" phone plug is actually a newer one. The earliest telephone plug in any homes was a 4 hole receptacle for the 4 prong cord plug to connect the ;phone at different locations in a home. We converted our 1958 house to the smaller plugs around the mid-1980's.
OMG I have one of those! I'd been wondering...
I've still got some of those old 4 prong receptacles from when we changed ours out in the early 80s. My dad never threw anything away.
Before that giant four-prong plug was a similar 3-prong version.
And a still older fixture is just a box with screw terminals inside -- from days when installing a new extension phone was a telephone company service call. (And the instrument belonged to the phone company -- it was part of the phone network).
modular
@@bryanhenderson591 this is interesting little timeline of phone plugs. Thanks for the comment!
Hidden rooms and secret passageways have always thrilled me about older homes. A great concept for privacy!
Or spying 🕵️♂️ 🤔
You just made me realize I may have had a few dreams about a very old house that has a whole 3rd floor upstairs that I’ve been afraid to go up to for those reasons! I live in it in my dream, but never venture up! Weird!
I would want a hidden room just so I can have a secret study/library. It looks great when depicted on TV.
Thank you for watching Thomas!
Even with modern heating and air conditioning systems, transom windows really help with air circulation.
House a friend rented had transoms on the floor! They were really great. Open them in the evening and the cool air comes in the bottom, hot air goes out the top. Unfortunately, both sets were on the same wall. No cross-venilation.
Yes they do. Thank you for watching!
Here's one more: high ceilings. If you've ever been in a home from the 19th or early 20th century in the American south, you might've noticed that the ceilings were weirdly high. Sometimes as high as 12 feet, compared to the 8 or so feet typical of modern homes.
This was air conditioning. The high ceilings allowed warm air to rise higher, above the heads of the room's occupants. Today though, air conditioning and ceiling fans allow for lower ceilings and more compact, efficient buildings.
Side note: if you're new to ceiling fans, you can change their direction. There's a switch somewhere below the fan blades. If it's up, the fan will spin one way and pull air up, if it's down or will spin the other way. Use this in the winter to push warm air down from the ceiling, and in the summer to pull it up.
Also from the American South. The house I grew up in had an attic fan. A friend of mine still has one and uses it during the summer months. It works well. If I ever have the chance to build a house, an attic fan will be included in its design.
@Michael, we’re the upper sections of those tall walls sometimes slatted or perforated to allow air flow? A design often seen in the tropics.
@@naomiburn8386 Not that I've seen, but it's a feature I haven't really looked for either. I'll keep an eye out in the future
Those super high ceilings were also used in S Calif, they really reduced the heat.
Haha I commented more or less the same thing except I discussed how tall windows that could be raised and lowered went with high ceilings to circulate air in the room.
RE: Small Rooms \ Many Doors -- the "open concept" has actually made newer houses more vulnerable to fire than older homes. Our fire department does demonstrations encouraging folks to sleep with their interior doors closed as fire slows itself down with the smoke trapped in the room it starts in.
@Nate: I don’t like ANYthing about open concept living! Imagine once people realize what you’re saying is true, and want to put up walls again! Lol
It makes them more vulnerable to fire, easier pickings for home invaders, harder to manage in terms of light and sound, harder to choose themes for specific rooms... there are a lot of issues with open concept design. I never liked being able to see everything that's going on in a house from any point within it. That just makes it lack privacy, especially if you also have large windows. It also makes the entire home feel like one big room. You could be in the living room or a bedroom or the kitchen because everything looks the same. If you don't make every single part of the house look the same, it just looks stupid because you have weird changes in wall color or decorations. There is no room to express the individuality of each space; you can't have a warm, cozy den full of soft pillows and a fireplace if you're also going to have an office across the giant, unending room with no separation in between. Having different rooms offers a way to clearly demarcate where one atmosphere ends and another begins. You can't really do that with open concept spaces, unless you're okay with it looking like an unorganized mess.
Sorry for the long rant, it's just that you brought up a good point and I wanted to elaborate a bit on other areas where open concept is lacking. Thank you for the original comment.
Transoms had a more interesting purpose when gaslight was common: Gaslights put out a shocking amount of heat, and popping open a transom would let the hot air out instead of pooling around the ceiling and heating up the room. An open window wouldn't help nearly as much, because the heat would have to get down below head-level before it could get out.
They also made cooling the house more effective by creating a crosswind from temperature differential. You'll notice in a lot of old houses and school buildings, there are windows that open at the bottom, and windows that open at the top. Open windows on one side of the house at the top, and windows on the other side of the house at the bottom, and the temperature difference between the top and bottom creates more effective air circulation than simply opening regular windows.
Honestly, older homes were often made more intelligently than modern homes.
That's so interesting- now I know why they were in my old apartment! They looked exactly like the picture in the video. We would open or close them every once in a while but not for any real reason haha
Transoms main purpose is to allow the build up of natural gas to escape. back in the day natural gas did not have the odor it does today. it was a silent killer.
@@joem4507 What makes you think that was the MAIN purpose rather than a side benefit to what is primarily temperature control?
An open transom window also allowed voices to be heard clearly from another room or a neighbor's apartment. Thus the expression "I heard it through the transom".
The newest house I've lived in was built in the mid=Eighties, and it has outlets for landline phones - as well as cable coax. Hearing this described as an "old house feature" makes ME feel real old.
coax is still used today lol for internet modems
My home was built n 1983 and there’s a land line hook up in the kitchen.
Literally EVERY place I've ever lived has had a phone jack - including the apartment built in the 1990's.
@stopthecrazyguy 36+The thing I remember most vividly from that time was that cut=throat competition from long-distance carriers ("Remember, if you don't make a choice, they will make the choice for you") to be your preferred long distance provider.
Just like the Big Three automakers, there were only three companies to choose from, and to be sure, the choice was even less consequential than picking a pick-up truck from Chevy, Ford, or Dodge.
But you wouldn't have known that from how fiercely the battle for each landline was waged by those carriers.
We built our house about 13 years ago, and big concern was putting CAT 5 jacks in every room/bedroom so the kids could use computers in there in the future. Turns out we never needed them because wifi was becoming widely available. Now they date our house! LOL
Interesting fact: Ice Boxes were called "refrigerators" back when they were the only cold storage devices around. It was only after the mechanical versions started showing up that people began referring to the older version as "iceboxes" to distinguish them from the newfangled appliances.
Now I understand why the word "refrigerator" appears in "Little Women."
Another interesting fact early refrigerators used gases that were known to be toxic until the invention of Freon which is less directly toxic.
It caused its own problems
The man who invented Freon also invented Leaded gasoline.
Accidently killed more people than anybody else in history.
Look up a YT creator named Veratasium. The video just came out.
@@shawnr771 did you know? In the nineteens a mechanical refrigerator cost more than a car
@@dustmybroom288 no but it would suprise me.
My grandfather called the fridge a "icebox" he showed me a episode of the three stooges that showed what he was talking about. In natural three stooges form, i remember the house was on a hill with stairs and the ice was melted before they go to the top. LOL
I'm surprised you didn't talk about sleeping porches because you had some pics of old houses in the beginning that had them. I live in Tucson AZ and we have whole areas of older bungalows that all have a porch upstairs that is covered for sleeping. It has always been the nicest thing to sleep with the breeze blowing over you at night in the desert.
In Texas where most old houses were one story, the sleeping porch was across the back of the house. It had siding like the rest of the house, but only a third or halfway up, then screen above that.
Older houses in the Midwest have them, a holdover from times when a fan or open window was the only relief from summer heat. I slept on ours for years growing up.
That is a great feature to mention. Thank you for watching and mentioning that one.
When I was a kid in the early 50's, our house was built on 1908 and had some of the features mentioned. One feature you left out that was common in our area is the sleeping porch...in the lower states were high ceilings, outdoor cooking facilities, bay windows for catching breezes and cupolas for exhausting heat; to name a few.
A lot had a summer kitchen too.
We had 2 sleeping porches - one on the west end, the other on the east end of the upstairs hall. Aided in cross ventilation as well. House was built before air conditioning or forced air heat.
One of my aunts has a house with an upstairs sleeping porch, it was nice at first we used to play in there as kids but now when I go over it feels like the floor is so thin that you could fall through if you jump hard enough
Pp
Bonus points if the porch ceiling was painted "haint" blue.
I grew up in a 150yo house with pocket doors separating the formal living room, and informal family room. It was amazing how much of a difference they made in energy costs during hot summers, and cold winters. But it was amazing how much space it allowed for family gatherings, and larger parties.
How very cool!!! And of course I have to ask...was it a haunted house lol. My childhood house built in the 50s was def haunted...and my fam moved in circa the late 60s.
My old family home had French doors that allowed you to close off those parts of the house in the winter. And yes, it was haunted. Very strange things happened in that home! Built in the 1910's.
@@naomilindberg2328 I wish I could see pics of your old house!
Thank you for watching and telling us about your home you grew up in Bethany!
My grandparents owned a house that was on the National Register of Historic Places. At the side of the street, there was a decorative iron post with rings on it for tying up horse reins. When the city rebuilt the curb and sidewalk, they had to temporarily remove the post and then replace it in the exact same location. The house had thirteen rooms, and only one of them was a bathroom.
yikes 1 bathroom id literally settle for a seperate outside bathroom "room"
Some houses still have carriage steps out front, next to the hitching post.
Probably when the house was built, there were no bathrooms in it... just an out'house'. Is the existing bathroom as big as a regular bedroom? Uhhh Huhhhh....
@FeedScrn Yes, I actually noticed that when I was a child. The bathroom is the same size as the bedroom that is right beside it!
@@LucidDreamer54321 - mmmmm Yep.
We live in a 1889 craftsman and I love all the charm that comes with it. I grew up in a home that was also 100 yrs old, so when it came to buying my own house we only looked at 2 newer homes, I hates them both haha!
Not only is our home well made with beautiful wood floors, trim, built ins, and gorgeous stained glass windows, but we only paid 80 thousand for it! Now that was almost 20 years ago and now it's worth about 5 times as much, but still it was way cheaper than all the newer homes.
I also see how quick these new homes go up, and the cheap materials used to make them and I wouldn't want a home like that. Sadly we are becoming empty nesters so we are going to be getting a smaller home on a lot more land sooner than later. I will miss my craftsman that I raised my children in when that day comes. Hope to sell it to another new family so they can build memories in it like we did.
I'd love to design and build my own home or buy an old one to refurbish (hopefully without lead or asbestos contaminants). New construction and even homes from throughout the mid to late 1900s are cheaply built without any real sense of style. The latter also have a tendency to be afraid of insulation, which is a massive pain to deal with. If I'm going to live in a house without proper insulation, you bet I'm going to look for something that has style and charm to it!
I'm not as much of a fan of building my own home, even though I'm going into architecture, but at least I'll be able to identify problems unique to my future family's situation and address them in the design of the house. The placement of the master bathroom is a big one that I think about a lot... why is there never a buffer zone between the bathroom and the bedroom? Why not put something like a closet in between to absorb light and sound in the middle of the night if someone needs to use the bathroom?! The world may never know.
Makes me feel old! I remember a number of these things from my childhood in the early 1950's. We lived in an older home that had a number of these features. I remember the push-button on/off switches, milk doors, dial telephones, the old style electrical wiring, backyard incinerators for burning trash, hanging clothes on a clothesline to dry, cars before seat belts, street corner fire alarm boxes for reporting a fire, smog so thick it hurt to breath, party line telephone, and much more.
Yes, I think in the last 20 years it has sped by and things have changed so very quickly. People can't wait to get rid of those old things and embrace the new technology that means no wires and extra clutter. Don't get me wrong, I still like the old things.
Sounds like you are an American. I am English and was born and grew up in a home built in 1666. No inside toilet. No mains water, this came from a well and was brought into the house in buckets. No electricity. When I started to school I was fascinated with the light switches and taps(faucets) . At 72, I now live in a house built in 1972, with many modern conveniences but I still hang my laundry on the line outside on fair weather days. ps. My childhood was not too typical of the time, but one advantage was having 70 acres of land which allowed me a lot of freedom and a diet of home grown organic food. Love from England.
Thank you. I was beginning to think I was the only one.
dial telephones? When I was little, to make a phone call you picked up the receiver, the operator came on and asked what number you wanted ("number please"). When dial telephones came along we felt like we had entered the high tech space age.
I still peg my washing out to dry. It's common practice in the UK. :)
My mother used to work for an older lady back in the 90s. The house the old lady lived in was the one she had grown up in. It still had the push button lights and they still worked and there was a set of pocket doors that separated the living room from the dining room. The old farm sink had been there since the 1930s and all the bathroom fixtures were original from the 1920s. There were old daguerreotypes of her family in the house still and an old buffet in the dining area that was given to my mom when the old lady passed that my mom still has. It was a neat old house👍🏻
That does sound like a neat house. I love those old farm sinks and I'm not quite sure what they aren't more popular. I'm sure lady had some interesting keepsakes as well. Thank you for watching and sharing some memories of your mother and the lady she worked for.
@@RhettyforHistory oh yeah she did. She had some old paper money from the 20s in mint condition and some old spelling bee medals from when she was a kid. Her bed was turn of the century and so was her vanity and dresser. If I'm not mistaken they were her parents originally. She probably had a lot of other stuff that was very old and still in great condition but I never saw any of it.
My paternal grandparents lived in an old farmhouse that had once been a school in the 1930s but there was very little left of the original interior as it had been redone. I think only the floors were original. Thanks for another great video 👍🏻
Interesting.
@@RhettyforHistory farm
sinks are very popular. They are just expensive and do take up more space.
Thank you for this video. I'm 71 and remember push button lights,transom windows,milk chutes,laundry shoots, and some other cool things that brought back good memories😉.
My grandmother’s house had those things. The milk was still delivered into the little door in the kitchen when I was a kid. And there was a cabinet with a built in ironing board. Thanks for the explanation about the basement toilet. I always thought it was ridiculous but my husband is a contractor and he automatically used that setup for the original purpose.
The main problem with those were the proper height for drainage.If you're lower than the main drain, it won't flush and also the smell stays in the basement
@@blainerudy2255 What happens in the basement stays in the basement
@@blainerudy2255 My basement toilet works well enough with gravity alone, but my next-door neighbor's needs a macerating pump because the main line runs downhill from their side.
The farmhouse I live in, built in 1931, has an ironing board in a closet and I still use it. We also have a toilet and shower in the basement - enclosed since I've lived there...hubby uses it all the time with no problems with drainage to our septic system and no smell.
I wish they had also shown a built-in ironing board - there very popular. Another thing not shown was a cabinet between the kitchen and dining room that served both sides. We had one and it was really great to not have to carry dishes and flatware from the kitchen, just open from the dining room side. We also had a pocket door between the dining room and the kitchen. We had to put a hook and eye latch on it because our Australian Shepherd very soon learned to slide it open! Built circa 1900, we had the picture rails among other things mentioned here as well as beautiful leaded glass windows!
Loved this video. The only one I thought of - and lived with - was the attic fan. They were wonderful instead of air conditioning. Kept the house cool in the mornings & evenings. And the air in the house was always fresh. Wish I had one now!!
My MIL’s house was built in the 80s I think, and has one! It’s in New England, so the nights are so nice & cool!
I think attic fans are still current. And they're every bit as useful in a house that has air conditioning, because they substantially reduce the air conditioning electric bill.
I grew up in muggy Missouri and remember well the comfort of falling asleep with cool air from my open bedside window being pulled in by the attic fan. As an adult I lived in an older "rowhouse" in DC which had a belvedere. This was a small tower in the ceiling at the top of the three story stairwell. It had transom windows on all four sides that could be opened to catch the breeze and draw the rising hot air out of the house.
@@bryanhenderson591 Most reputable HVAC companies will recommend attic fans when installing central A/C - it simply takes some burden off the A/C system.
Sounds like you are referring to a whole house fan. These are still used in the South quite a bit. Flip a switch in a cool part of the day and the whole house cools down in about 5 minutes. You can do the reverse in the winter if it gets warm in the afternoon.
The house I grew up in had something I was told was called a "borning room", which was intended for childbirth. It was paneled on all sides (ceiling, walls, floor) with wood paneling -- pine, I think -- and I'm guessing that was so that it could be easily sanitized. It was right off the kitchen. We used it as a den. Let's see... the house was also insulated with corn cobs behind lath and plaster. We discovered that when we rewired the house. It was interesting to see the old corn cobs because they are much smaller/shorter than the ones you see today.
@Rob Mikels We later moved to Maine and my mom told me that she heard from others that there, old houses used seaweed for insulation. I never tried to corroborate that but given it’s another plant material which has air cells built in, it makes sense to me.
I have seen sawdust in the ceiling for insulation in an old cabin in WI on the lake. I helped remove it and replace it and what a mess that was!
It was also used as a sick room or for hospice.
Birth thru death happened in there, in “borning rooms”.
Interesting
Smaller size, before GMO
One of my college dorms had picture rails. It was nice because not being allowed to puncture the walls is standard, but often students aren't given good alternatives.
That really would be a nice place to have them. Thank you for watching!
Here in Japan, the intercom is still universal, along with the doorbell camera. My wife and I use ours every day! Japanese homes almost never have central heat/AC - they employ the room/space concept and have separate units for each room that needs to be temperature regulated.
If I am not mistaken, what you are describing is called zone heating and can also be accomplished with central heat/AC by using different thermostats, which then use dampers to direct the heat/cool air to where it is needed. Otherwise, the control is done by opening and/or closing vents/registers.
Because Japanese homes are rebuilt so often (isn't 30-40 years the norm?) I think there is less fear about putting in 'trendy' or house-wide features, such as intercoms or built in electronics, like self-heating bathtubs and fancy washlet toilets. By the time they start failing, it'll be time to rebuild the house. In other places, were the mentality is that house is essentially permanent, and maybe expected to last a hundred years or more, there is a mental reluctance to putting in similar features, since they will wear out far faster than the house and become a nuisance.
@@davidrickard8943 It’s more like a mini-split system, which you can find in the states on older homes that do not have HVAC.
@@blatherskitenoir you're not suggesting that we've been building homes with more than a 20-year foresight, for the last 50 years I hope...
Of note those houses 100 years and older are made mostly of primitive growth wood which is not as prevalent now is it once was
In my opinion that sounds more cost effective to have separate units for each room then you would only be running heat/ac for the rooms being used.
Living in Virginia, the freakiest thing I saw in some really old homes (mansions, really) were those servant stairs, as well as servant passageways. These were VERY narrow corridors that were hidden in the walls that servants would use to ferry food and drinks, etc. back and forth to the kitchen without disturbing house guests. I guess if you asked for more coffee **poof** a servant popped out of the wall with a fresh pot. I saw three such homes there.
@Darrin Nunyah: it would be even creepier if you actually saw the old servants, (ghosts), while you were there!
I will say, the servant stairs were very helpful as a teenager- sneaking out was about 10x easier.
Thank you for watching and sharing some of what you saw in Virginia.
Servant stair is very creepy indeed
One of the last homes built on my street in the 70’s had a secret panel door in one of the bedrooms leading to a cedar closet.
The house I grew up in had pocket doors that allowed the living room to be bypassed completely, it was apparently used as a ballroom. There was a hallway that went around it, and both sets of doors were quite impressive. I miss the glorious usefulness of brass, beautiful, and self lubrication too.
Another interesting feature in most homes of the Victorian era was the "Trunk Room". This was a large closet usually located at the top of the house and used for the storage of the big steamer trunks and hat boxes required for traveling.
Interesting! I’ve read some old British mystery novels in which the house has a “box room”. I’m thinking these were used for the same purpose.
Also known as a "lumber room," though I don't know why.
@@Blakeneyd we had a box room. Was the 3rd bedroom and built over the the stairs so had an unusual shape.
These are now called 'walk in closets'.
@@jonathantan2469 Um, no. There were usually no rods for hanging clothes. Victorians had enormous wooden trunks that had to be stored when not in use. Fun fact, you can estimate the age of such trunks by the shape of the lid. Early versions had flat lids. They were stack up in freight cars, and the ones on the bottom get ruined. So, manufacturers started to shape lids in ever-increasing curves to limit stacks.
Loved this video, and the shout-out for more closed rooms. I love the idea of being able to have some privacy when another household member has guests over (and eliminating the echoing of noise is also a huge benefit)
Amen to that echoing comment! Never have liked open concept. Would rather close off my kitchen. No one wants to hear me clanging pans and running water-TV volume gets louder and louder so they can hear! Let’s get real, it’s all about the TV. IF I’m entertaining, get out of my kitchen! 😂
Oddly enough wide pocket doors could be used to solve this issue - open when you want open, closed when you don't.
Nobody is mentioning them accommodating the luxury of being able to go into the most functional places in your house with the curtains open when you are not dressed for the day.
Having such closed rooms on the outside wall prevents people from seeing inside, when you are not presentable.
BTW, I don't see what is wrong with giving them curtains instead of doors.
People act like open concept is a new innovation. Open concept is what Little House on the Prairie had.... It's as old as pioneer homes.
It’s funny the open concept is so big now. Years ago my parents were at a party 70’s & the couple had done that to their farmhouse replicas
Loved this video! I love looking at old homes they are so much prettier than homes now a days.
I agree. Thank you for watching!
Besides eliminating the need for transom windows, electric lighting made it possible to easily produce more elaborate meals after dark. Before electric lighting, the main meal of the day was typically at mid-day. Some people still call the mid-day meal dinner because of that.
We used the term "dinner" to signify the largest or main meal of the day. Therefore at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, or whenever we were having a large group of people in to eat, it was called Christmas/Thanksgiving/Easter DINNER. We usually had a larger meal in the evening on normal days when Dad go home from working in the fields. The other term used for the evening meal was supper and the midday meal woud called lunch.
@@davidrickard8943 Same here except the midday meal on Sunday was also "dinner".
Interesting.
My grandmother who grew up on a farm during the Depression explained what the difference between the noon meal being called lunch or dinner.
If they made food and took it to the workers in the fields it was lunch.
If they cooked a meal and the workers came to house to eat,
It was Dinner.
Thanks for the other insight.
Americans considering evening the main mealtime will forever mystify me.
@@twincast2005 Well for the most part many Americans only get a 30 minute lunch break.
Especially those of us in service or construction jobs.
Personally breakfast is my main meal and anything after that is a bonus.
I lived in a house that had a laundry elevator. The elevator could be used to transport dirty laundry to the basement and then clean laundry back to the upstairs. The elevator was powered by a hand crank that was very easy to turn. Using the elevator was safer and easier than carrying a laundry basket up and down stairs.
My sister had one built into her two story home, circa 2010! They are a great idea!
Lucid Dreamer, I had a great aunt who had the “laundry elevator”. Back in this day people of means had them in their homes and they were called dumb waiters. I got in trouble for playing in it as a child.
Dump waiter...used for food and other things
Is that different from a dumb waiter?
@@jessicabixler1658 dumb waiters
Wall anchors are still in use in Czechia for mine areas. Where whole villages are undermined and ground is sinking slowly. Purpose is to make the house to sink as one object. If you do not have these, one wall may sink faster and rip your house in half (I saw it when my friend's bathroom moved 20 cm from the rest of the house.)
Wall ties are a common feature in UK houses usually as a result of repaired World War ll bomb damage.
You’ll hear it in some Victorian-era houses that have architectural niches built into the wall of the staircase landing. The story goes that these niches were called “coffin corners.” Someone might explain that, because most people died at home in their beds and because most bedrooms were upstairs, it was difficult to get the casket up and down the stairs when the staircase turned a corner. So at the landing, Victorian architects would cut a niche into the wall. The pallbearers would insert one corner of the coffin into the niche and make the turn at the landing.
Part of this is true: people did tend to die at home and the bedrooms of larger homes did tend to be located on the second or third floors. And many Victorian homes do have niches built into the wall of the staircase. But these were for decorative purposes: to display a statue, perhaps a bust, or a vase, or maybe flowers. Why would anyone carry a coffin upstairs to the corpse rather than carry the corpse downstairs to the coffin? Most books about Victorian architecture debunk this myth. For example, John Maass calls it a hoax in The Victorian Home in America (1972).
Have a look at the front doors of those homes. Many could lift off the hinges and be used as "cooling" boards for the deceased.
A lot of those homes have coffin doors as well - a secondary 'front door' so to speak. You don't have the living go in and out of the same door as the dead. The Victorians had a lot of death superstitions. The dead were always carried out feet first so they could not lure others to follow them to the afterworld by looking them.
Around the victorian time period they had books of the dead or recently deceased and viewing rooms ( a special room in the house to put the coffin in to allow people to pay their last respects to the dead (this was before the rise of funeral homes)
@@erin7231 That’s right, they had the living room and a parlour. If your family member died they would be cleaned and prepared and would be kept in the parlour for viewing until it was time to go for the funeral.
My dad was an architect and had house plans from the 1920's. The builder designed the doors and windows and bookcases. It was beautiful craft work which you mostly do not find in today's homes with standard doors and windows and cabinets you buy from big box stores.
I love the built-ins that are typically in older houses
Back when folks took more time and pride in their workmanship.
Thank you for watching Marcia!
My great aunt had a 1920s house that had a summer house in the back. She used to can food there during the hot summer months, the "house" itself was merely a screened-in great room, one side used as a kitchen and she kept 3 full size beds on the other side. Only pony walls that went halfway up and screen the rest of the way. There were so many big galvanized canning pots out there. We used to go out there and jump on the beds, big, overstuffed feather beds. Mattress ticking old, smelly and brittle. Funny how those memories are still so vivid.
We love old homes and our current house was built in 1894. Thank you for a reminder of all the quirks we love in these gems.
Oh wow! You really are in a historic home! The oldest one I have lived in is 1929. Thank you for watching and sharing more about your home.
I’m from PA and it’s true, we love our old homes. I’ve never lived in one newer than 100 years old. I’ve been in newly constructed homes and they’re just not built the same. Not as sturdy, not as much character. Not as much care taken in their construction. Walls are wafer thin, too. I like reading comments on those “Worst Places to Live in PA” and the stock footage usually shows normal neighborhoods here, lol. People comment how old everything looks and guess how cheap the homes must be. How wrong they are!
One item you missed was the breezeway. In the Midwest this would be an enclosed space between the garage and the house. It didn’t have any heat or cooling but all your coats, boots, etc were kept there so that you didn’t bring dirt into the house. I discovered when I moved south that these breezeways were not enclosed. In the hot of the summer, this open space pulled cool air through giving you a cool breeze to keep you cool during hot southern summers.
Thank you for watching and sharing something else for us to remember!
My relatives on the East Coast call theirs a mudroom. I always appreciated it too
My neighbors next door bought my aunts house and have one of those still, they redid the whole house after we all flooded twice (Texas we flood a lot ) and kept that breezeway. I haven’t heard that term since my aunt born in 1907 lived there I remember coming back from
Kmart and she telling my granny “go in there in the fridge in the breezeway and get us a beer !”
How about the intercom systems ? I sold a house recently with a NuTone that worked until Harvey came - had a radio that broadcast throughout the house and it was great for waking the kids up. I have one here but it stopped working when I was about 6 and my grandma gave up on getting it back to working
As a student in Pittsburgh, PA, I remember renting old houses with “Pittsburgh closets” which is a very shallow narrow closet used back in the day when people had a very few clothes.
Oh, that explains my friend's closet in her 1942! house, which has hooks and not a rail.
I looked at a house here in Ohio that was like that. I think it was built in the late 1800s or early 1900s. One room had shallow closets but a passage between two rooms in one. I thought it was cool, if not totally impractical for today.
I think it’s cause they hung up less stuff- the one or two suits or nice dresses they owned.
Right, the closet isn't deep enough to even use hangers. You hang the clothes on hooks on the back wall. But I suspect that wasn't *all* of their clothing - they still had chests of drawers and armoires, after all.
Visited the Packer Mansion in Jim Thorpe Pa. years back. They mentioned one way houses were taxed was on the size of the closets. The narrow closet was a way of avoiding taxes.
My Grandmother had a house in Queens NY. There were still farms across the street when I was little in the 50's. She had a lot of the features you showed. But one thing she had which was not shown here were vestiges of gas lamps in each room. Where they used to hang were decorative plaster disks on the walls and on the ceilings. They were mysterious looking and used to scare me.
Gas fixtures can still be found at McSorley's Old Ale House in Greenwich Village. They're electrified, though, with wiring snaked through the piping.
Our kitchen had a kerosene lamp over the kitchen table that could be lowered to be refilled. We also had pump-action "Flit" guns (a brand of insect spray) in the kitchen.
I grew up in an Edwardian home and there was still traces of the gas lamps. The house also had sash windows, but my dad gradually replaced them.
Thank you for watching and telling us about a feature in your grandmother's house!
Older homes in California Central valley often had a "vegetable pantry", especially those near enough the delta go get an afternoon breeze. This was a kitchen cabinet with an opening through the roof, and usually a vent on an outside wall, with slatted instead of solid shelves.
Another one I can't believe you missed is a ironing board cabinet. Lots of homes built in the 30's and 40's had a wall cabinet inset into the wall, and if you opened it there was a fold out ironing board. In my grandmother's house this was right next to the telephone nook.
My 1920s home in Los Angeles had a vegetable pantry. The pantry was vented to the crawl space under the house and vented to the attic. It was pretty effective at staying cooler than the inside of the house, but it was also gross with bugs and vermin.
In my grandma's house (built in 1939), the ironing board nook was in the kitchen. But the board had been removed, and little knick knack shelves installed in its place.
The house had a little milk-delivery door next to the side door.
And a coal chute, a root cellar, and a toilet in a closet in the basement---so if anyone was working in the basement, they wouldn't have to go all the way up to the 2nd floor, where the bathroom was.
My friend rented a house here in Galveston that had the ironing board board closet with the ironing board still in it. But the outstanding feature of this house was the little biscuit board ...it pulled out of the cabinet like opening a drawer. Used for rolling out biscuit or pie crusts dough
@@tpickett1381 A few houses I lived in had pull out wooden cutting boards, they were great cuz they were huge, often 24"×30" at least. They pulled all the way out for cleaning or oiling
I heard these were called “California coolers” (I’m assuming that’s where the 80’s wine coolers got their name). Lived in a 1920s house with a pantry that vented through the side of the house (opening covered in mesh under wood slats )
The old deisgns were so much more pleasing to the eye, the glass window above the door made the front look much more inviting
Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
I remember asking my parents about the slit in the medicine cabinet. They had never noticed it. When we pulled the cabinet out for painting, it had a couple of razors behind it. My fist house was in a neighborhood built in the '50s, and almost all the houses had coal doors. We also had the phone nook, where we kept our landline phone until we got rid of it. The slot underneath was meant to hold the 3" thick phone books that were once delivered annually to every house.
I don't think razor slits are quite as old-fashioned as he makes them out to be. I had an apartment with one in a building that was built in the early 80s according to the landlord. Forty-odd years is a fair time, but not back to iceboxes and root cellars.
The house that I grew up in was built in the 1800's and had the razor blade slots in the main bathrooms.
Those were later additions. Double edged safety razors came out in the early 1900s.
My dad always shaved with real razor blades. Only saw those receptacles in hotels
In 1975 my parents bought their first house that was built in the late 1800’s. When my dad started remodeling we found a bunch a odd things hidden behind those old walls. I really miss that old house!
Its all relative i suppose. There is a saying "Americans think 100 years is a long time and Britons think 100 miles is a long way". Its so true. I was astonished by how big America was!
Same with age... my house was built in 1850 and is "relatively new". At the bottom of the street they are Georgian from between 1780 and 1820 ish. There are two pubs, one is from the 1700s and the other from 1580. My village is in "The Doomsday Book" (so older than 1086, probably 8th century) I thought that was old...
However I went to Rome and went to a restaurant that was built in the 4th century!!!
@@fishyc150
To be fair as a Briton and a courier driver I consider 100 miles to be 'down the road' 😂
Ahhh the nostalgia! I grew up in an old home that has sadly been torn down. We had the laundry chute, phone nook, push button light switches and servant stairs. I initially wanted the servant room to be mine because I thought it would be sooo cool to have a sink in my room...I opted for the room with 2 closets though.
Thank you for watching and sharing some of what you had Jae!
The fact that phone jacks are considered “mysterious” and I’m only 29 years old and remember having/using them in several rooms in our houses growing up makes me feel ancient. 😫
Times are changing and I have many more years on you. Thank you for watching Alicia!
The last apt. we rented had jacks everywhere. When we moved into our home in 95 landlines were still a thing. Guess what? No Jack in the kitchen! Made me crazy.
Since the 90's, technology has started moving exponentially faster. In 5 years, we will live in a completely new world technologically. This feeling of being "ancient" because of new tech is going to be happening a lot more frequently with the rise of AI usage for innovation. In other words, you aren't that old lol
As someone with a 1950s home with 2 (formerly 3) pocket doors, I can understand why they're not common. They're hard to replace and repair. Sometimes you can get by just removing all the trim but other times you'll need to open up the wall if the track inside becomes damaged. As they age, it can be a real headache. Plus, latching or locking them securely has limited options that are usually finicky.
And you could lock your little sister in the basement by wedging a rubber spatula in the door
I assume they use the same rollers and tracks as sliding closet doors, which are always getting out of adjustment. Adjusting those things in a pocket door could be a real hassle unless access panels for such adjustments are designed into the envelope.
They are almost always designed without easy access. I have a couple in my home that we do not use because of adjustment issues. I really do not feel like removing walls
Thank you for watching and sharing your experience with them.
I lived in a 1900s Victorian home for some years and it had a neat feature at the door. There was a speaking tube which lead upstairs to a bedroom in which voice could travel. The home was previously used as a doctor's office and in turn patients may come at night to contact the doctor. It had also the open window frames on top of doors to allow the passage of air fr heating and cooling. Loved that house : )
I’ve lived in houses with Pittsburgh toilets, milk doors, picture rails, coal shoots, laundry shoots, and push button light switches that still worked great. My dad installed intercoms in our house when he built it in the ‘60s - very modern LOL
I’ve grown up in homes and apartments with all of those items. I really enjoy when a house, apartment or building still has a touch of its history intact.
I do too. Thank you for watching Tracy!
Hey Rhetty, here is an arcane feature for you. Many old, well built, homes in Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis had rock-stone foundations. Did you ever wonder why? Well, houses in these areas often had high water tables throughout much of the year. If the area got soggy you would have a wet basement, but a dry house. Also, many Europeans were stone craftsmen. So these guys could shape and cement stones together. So it was an employment opportunity. But, finally, the soils in these areas had large rocks and limestone rock ledges. When you wanted to build a nice house you would hire a crew of diggers to make your footprint. Since there was a pile of stones in what would become a front yard, the next job was to wash what stone was dug out. Then the masons would cut and fit the stones into a basement walls. Today engineering techniques have been invented to keep these old house basements intact, for future generations.
Very cool.
My parents old house in NY was built in the late 1800’s and it had a stone foundation. Our house was the first one built on that block. It had a big beautiful stone wall that was seven feet high. It is still in great shape along with the foundation of the house. They knew how to build things that would last back then.
@@GhosstRyder Actually no. Architects did NOT know how to build stone houses and there were many failures since the stones were a pile made into a pyramid shape. It was not until about 1940 that architects had to invent the inverted (up side down) Tee. A pyramid just keeps slicing into the soil like a spade, over decades. A tee-base never moves. Today in St Louis many of these old homes are having sections of the walls dug out and then supported with concrete pads.
@@MrMockingbird1313 Thank you. Our old house was built very well. We are still in contact with the new owners and everything is still holding up well. My dad and Nonna (Italian for grandpa) were both stone masons. They did Beautiful work throughout the NY area. Those skills seem to be lost now because kids today are all glued to their computers. My dad passed away when my boys were very young so unfortunately he didn’t teach them that skill but they have other very useful ones. I have an electrician and my older one installs high speed garage doors for businesses and large buildings.
@@GhosstRyder Excellent information. One HUGE difference is the soil content. In this part of the Mississippi valley the soil can turn to mush with a small earth tremor. Soil back east is much more stable. That is why the pyramid vs. the inverted tee makes so much difference.
Kitchens in houses built in the 1920s had narrow closets containing fold-out ironing boards. You still see them in Tom & Jerry cartoons.
When I was growing up in the ‘70s, people still had metal containers on their porches for milk and dairy deliveries-rusted and long unused even back then. Window seats and radiators were also a lot more common, and every high rise apartment building had fire escapes. Roofs had TV aerials, and backyards had cellar doors and clotheslines before tumble dryers were common.
I still love hanging my clothes out. They actually need less ironing as the wind keep flapping them around and the wrinkles many times disappear. Boy do they smell great to (if you don't have a ton of air pollution in your area and given your neighbor doesn decide that is the time they are going to burn their trash or spead menure on the fields, LOL!)
Wow. In the UK my grandparents were getting glass milk bottles delivered by the milkman in the mid-90s still.
Our house was built in the 1950s and we have one of these ironing boards in our kitchen wall.
They still sell fold out ironing boards at home depot, in 2022....
As a life-long observer of architecture, I thank you for sharing this!
You're welcome and thank you for watching!
If you currently live on a homestead, a root cellar is very handy to store your root vegetables. People are actually building root cellars much like the one showed in the video. Someday soon, we may be regretting how dependent we’ve become on the grocery store
My house is 110 years old. After I renovated I found out that one hallway closet had a floor drain that went all the way into the basement plumbing and the plumber told me that this drain was to collect the melted ice from the ice box which used to sit in that closet.
I bet that was a neat tidbit of info to find out.
@@jameshendricks8526 absolutely
That is a different feature. Thank you for watching and telling us about it.
I've been in old homes that had an ironing board in the wall and had a little door to keep it from view. The transom window above the front door is a great idea for extra light.
We had the ironing board that was tucked into its own little closet in the house I grew up in. I wonder why we don't have things like that now. I'm sure people still iron their clothes and it would be easier than pulling out the one that stands up on it own or the one that sits on the table - since both need someplace to store them.
@@hlltwin Most people just buy clothes that don't need pressing. They also can throw it back into the dryer with a damp towel to get out wrinkles. Lots of people just take clothes that need ironing to a laundry mat to have them wash and press for them.
I’ve never seen this in old houses but I have seen it in modern hotels and motels
@@KnittyKitty215 buy clothes don’t need ironing? All clothes need ironing, even tshirts look wrinkly and need ironed. Are you suggesting people don’t own irons??? That’s like such a basic appliance. We use our iron multiple times a week, how could people not have one? Especially if you have to wear button up shirts, they always need ironed.
@@rachelcookie321 I have only ironed a shirt maybe 5 times in 60 years. I'm suggesting that many people don't own an iron. Yes.
When I was a child, I lived in a very old farm house in Maine that had "Indian Blinds" set in the window frame. Useful for defense in about 1700 when early settlers were taken hostage by Native Americans and held for ransom. The heavy wooden blinds pulled across from the sides to prevent arrows entering, and there was a small cut-out area for shooting a gun through.
Was interested to see that I recognized most of the items from this video.
Woww!!!
@zzydny Indian shutters. Quite common in very old houses in New England. Someone else had mentioned them earlier.
@@kh3612 I would never have thought of them as "common" but it is fair to say that I also lived in another very old house in the Boston area that had them. I was unaware of a previous mention, so I am remiss for repeating information.
This video solved the mystery of my basement toilet! I never really questioned it before, but knowing it's purpose is fascinating. Makes sense, seeing as my neighborhood was built when the former steel mill nearby was the main employer.
Thank you for watching Kain!
I recently renovated and redesigned my new home, which had an open-plan living room and dining area. So, I built a diving wall and installed a pair of 15-panel, glass, "pocket doors", which operate in tandem when either is slid open or shut. Apart from saving on floor space and the unnecessary heating of an unused room, they are a very attractive and cool feature that still allows daylight to flood through. Additionally, the built-in, soft-close, damper mechanism prevents them from clattering together.
Sounds lovely
Thank you for watching and sharing what is in your new home!
I grew up in a house with a phone nook - I think it would be excellent to have something like this in modern homes, as a charging station.
Some of these things could be re-purposed, a little remodeling could make porch pirates a thing of the past.
We turned ours into first a designated homework zone when we were kids (having a spot where all your school stuff lives helps with the morning scramble and prevents lost homework!) and later into a charging area/print station.
Thank you for watching Joy!
I'm glad you included root cellars! I lived in a house in NH built in the 1700s, and we had two basements: the regular one (with sealed off brick ovens and a sand "floor") and the root cellar. Mom was a teacher and every summer when she'd get a summertime bonus, she'd load up on groceries (for a BIG family) and store most of it down there. It was always pleasantly cool in the cellar, since it had a northern exposure. We also had a second staircase, that originally was meant for the help to use instead of the big, main staircase.
Plenty of new homes in Canada, to this day, are built with a root cellar under the front porch. However, they are more commonly called “fruit cellars”.
OMG.... 1700s ??? There is no way most buildings built today would last 250+ years. Unless you have the home built it for yourself, Many builders often cut corners and skimp on quality. Look at how many 50 -60 year old high-rises have been demolished to start over... ( Just search RUclips for *building demolition* .... there are demo experts who can make a building collapse in on it self in the middle of a city.... great fun to watch.) I think I'll head over to one now.....
We lived way out in the country and had both a milk and bread man. The milkman, named Henry, would bring the milk right into the house (nobody locked their door) Our German Sheppard would bark her head off EVERYTIME, even though she knew him and what he was there for. The bread man would just stay in the truck and honk his horn, to avoid the dog. This bread man had the best cream filled doughnuts that I have ever had in my life.
I remember seeing the little slit in the medicine cabinet and being surprised that this is where you place your razors after use. I always wondered where they ended up. Pretty weird when you think about it.
Thank you for this really fun video !!
You're welcome and thank you for watching. I also appreciate you sharing some of your memories.
Yes, we loved our bread man too. Ours always brought donuts and delicious coffee cake.
I'm sure it got mentioned somewhere in these comments, but I would add that many of the larger old homes in my area have some sort of roof vent above the central stairs. This would be anything from a simple cupola to a large Greenhouse style skylight. On hot days they would open this up and strategically open lower windows. Of course this was before air conditioning. I was shocked at how affective this system was. Between the siphon effect and heat rising out the breeze at the top of the stairs would blow back your hair!
LIke they say, necessity is the mother of invention. They HAD to have some way to cool those mansion/mammoth homes! Now a days, when you don't have A/C the achieve much the same effect with attic fans, even on single level homes!
A lot of traditional houses in Japan are tall with skinny rooms. In the hot, humid summers the entire house acts like a chimney with the hot air rising into the rafters and out the vents while pulling cool air in through the lower windows. The ancient technology works so well that AC is still rare in Japanese houses. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
With the Victorian house we once lived in, the Tower was the highest "room." Alongside what was Grandmother's was a room (NE corner of house) that was separated by a wall of casemate windows. It took me YEARS of thinking about it, until I realized that the 'window' room was a COOL room, and with the tower up high, and the right windows and doors open, it would work exactly as you describe! WONDERFUL!!
@@mister-v-3086 Kind of the same for me. I had repaired a bunch of skylights and they're always up high and most of the time above stairs and thought why would they put them up here? One time on a hot day, I got it, I could feel the wind whipping out of the house through the skylight from the lower levels. I finally understood and thought it was so interesting.
There is a mansion in Savannah that has such a cupola fitted with a ring of gaslights. The flames created a forced draft. I suppose it was built in the late 1800's.
My grandparents had a home with most of the really old stuff. The transom windows truly worked magic on a hot summer day/night without the cost of electricity. And, pocket doors are amazing!
Thank you for watching and telling us about your grandparents home Debra!
A feature you missed were the heat registers between floors. I lived in a home built in the late 1800's that had metal grates in the ceiling on the ground floor, and the floor above. They allowed heat from the first floor to rise up.
I have a grate in one of my upstairs bedroom floors but somebody in the past redid the ceiling on the lower floor and closed off the hole but they were at least smart enough to leave the upper grate behind
I had those in my house when I moved in. I still have the grates, but I covered the holes while remodeling. I still have 3 large pocket doors. Another thing that I used to see around my town was posts by the street where people could tie off their horses.
I took out an unused chimney in my 1930's house and used the space for a laundry chute to the basement. It has a horizontal hatch at the top and a door on the main floor that stays closed. No issues with the inspectors, but if needed, I can also put a spring-loaded steel door at the bottom. It's a lot safer than carrying laundry baskets down stairs.
And no, I've never had any clothes get stuck.
Opening transoms are extremely helpful in multizone minisplit air conditioner houses. They allow a room (like bath or bedroom) without a head unit to get conditioned air while the door is closed.
You are right about that. I think they are great to have and I love seeing them in old homes and buildings. Thank you for watching!
Houses may be built with "jumper ducts" that provide the airflow of a transom, although no light. My house here in Arizona has no individual room return ducts to the HVAC, but has jumper ducts instead that return air to the main part of the house where the main return is in the ceiling, going straight to the HVAC in the attic.
@@oldtvnut transoms are difficult with low ceilings and 7ft doors. However refit louvers in interior doors often look tacky. Return ducts are great, but often the multi minisplit is installed to avoid putting ducts in old construction. If ducting a house anyway, the obvious question is....then why not just install central?
Now an alternative I have considered is to put historic vents in the wall or over doors. No light but they look like stove or big BBQ dampers. Typically iron, ornate and circular with a sliding damper.
Oh rhett! That was incredibly fun since I have had the privilege of living in homes that had every one of the features. It was so much fun to grow up with these then modern features. I enjoyed every one of them and they make great conversation pieces! Thanks again
They do make great conversation pieces and I think that is really neat that you have experienced all of these first hand. Some of them I have only experienced thru home tours. Thank you for watching!
And as a child, they made interesting learning, and the possibility for play (coal chutes, root cellars) in unusual places.
Wow you live in a house with…….separate rooms. How revolutionary.
Yes, pocket doors really should make a comeback! The house I currently live in is the same one I grew up in, with pocket doors between the front and back parlors. The house was built in the very early 1800s and, unlike Victorian-era pocket doors, the doors were not hung from above. Instead, they glide on a thin metal rail nailed to a low, rounded wooden threshold. I've always thot that was a better idea than hanging the doors, since less can go wrong!
I once lived in a house that had a horrible folding door installed in a normal doorway. A 1960s, accordion-folding, temporary wall, sized for a standard doorway. It never stayed shut and took up 1/3 of the doorway when folded.
I never found a pocket door that worked. They had a nasty habit of warping while inside the wall. If they make a comeback, they should be made of something other than wood.
@@FeedScrn I haven't seen a pocket door made since the 1980s that had issues with warping. It's just not a thing any more. Most interior doors are just a few strips of plywood with a paper honeycomb core and some laminated cardboard glued to them.
I mean I get where you're coming from and that is definitely an issue with pocket doors in houses from say the 1930s or 1920s, but anything built in the past 50 years or so? Not really. Unless it was built incredibly poorly.
@@fermitupoupon1754 - Good to hear. Thanks for posting.
They are much better than swinging doors!
The Pittsburg toilet was installed for allowing sewer backups to occur in the basement rather than in the finished area of the house (the intent was not for coal workers -- though it almost certainly ended up being used for that).
So would they exclusively go to the basement to 💩?
@@Fiery154 Well no, you have to understand all the toilets in a house are connected to a single large sewage pipe that then connects to municipal sewage or septic. But with pipes things can go both ways.
If the first opening of the pipe is on the upper floor then anything that comes up will come up there and it also makes it much harder to access and unclog the system.
This is why toilets have water in the bowl, the S bend / S trap prevents sewage gas from escaping the pipe. Sinks also have these traps to prevent gas.
More likely in older houses built without indoor plumbing. When the home got indoor toilet and didn't want to remove a bedroom to install a bathroom. My grandparents' house was like that>>full bath put in the basement.
Yes. This channel is interesting but the guy is often loose with the facts. I guess it results in more comments.
My dad still calls it the ice box. He’s 78. Personally I like the old houses. I lived in a house in Salem MA that was built in 1793. We lived there for 6 years and it was great.
I still hear that a lot. It's hard to break old habits and I know I do that one different things. Thank you for watching Lucas!
my grandpa does too and my freinds mom lol
Our first house was built in 1967. It had a laundry chute from the upstairs bathroom to a large tub that sat right beside the washing machine. My wife and I loved that thing.
It sure seems like it would make things easier. Thank you for watching and sharing your memories!
@@5610winston The Amish make these. They don't use electricity.
BTW, that old wiring you showed is nicknamed “knob & tube” wiring and was a great design, but over the years people would inadviseably splice in new circuits thus overloading the wiring with too many amps which caused fires).
They also were in uninsulated attics. When adding in insulation became important, that was a problem.
@@ArtStoneUS insulation didnt cause any issues but badly done connections would. The wire itself is very good and durable stuff. Its the way it was connected that is bad. They did not use wire nuts to hold connections TIGHT, instead, they often just wrapped one wire around another that was passing thru. That is a horrid way to connect, and it can arc especially when it gets old and oxidized.
In 1980 friend inherited an old photographic studio that had really old wiring from the 1920s, when he decided to try using it there was a small explosion as a length of wire was blown out of the wall.
My house still has knob & tube. Although it been replaced and not used, My work shop still has it, And is used just for lights. Walls been rewired for tools. Use to have a 2 prong power strip that ran all ways round the wall,
I love different rooms. I hate open concept. Love pocket doors. Great video.
Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
Add built-in vacuum systems to the list! I lived in a house that had one, it was madly loud but pretty convenient, the only scary thing was opening the wall covers to the hose connector activated the vacuum every time
my aunt had one of those central vacuum things put in and I hated it. Especially when my mum decided she wanted one in their house too. I hated having to use it so I left it to her. They also had intercoms installed which were fun at first, but ultimately useless bc they rarely worked properly. I don't remember when we stopped bothering with them and just hollered up/down the stairs at each other again lol
Our first house in the UK was actually one half of what had once been the local manor house (Georgian era; it had been split into 2 council houses in the 1970s and then sold off in the 80s), and still had remnants of the servants' bell pull cords hidden under the carpeting upstairs. Unfortunately the carpets also hid woodworm so it all had to be taken out and replaced. Outside the front door had the boot scraper thing too but we never used it. We had been renovating/restoring it back to what it might have looked like originally, but had to move and sell it, and from what I was told, the new owners ripped it all out. *gutted* They even ripped out my beautiful garden and the roses, and just... left it. I don't understand people who do that...
The recent ones are very silent. You can still buy them
I'm kind of interested in having one. I heard of one crazy dude who arranged it to just blow the dust out into the back yard - the dust was out of the house, no flow restricting HEPA filters, and no bag emptying etc.
I'm not quite that brave, however having it do strait into an outside bin could be handy - never touch dust again.
@@paulstubbs7678 You need to plan it with the building. To add it later is an expensive option, the channels have to go downwards only, lot of brickwork needed.
The one couple i know to have one, he wanted it, she hates it.
It is so silent so she has the impression it doesn't work.
Also if you suck some valuable good, you have to search the whole bin, not only the little bag.
I thought the whole point of those things was that they were quiet. The unit was usually placed in the basement or out in the garage so all you heard in the house was the suction.
Growing up on the east coast of FL, I was familiar with a property that had a huge hunting lodge dating back to the early 1900's.
It had one of those 'secret stairways' hidden inside a wall, with both upper & lower access further camouflaged as closet walls. It was quite steep & narrow, but due to the very high ceilings of the lower level, there was easily room for 20 or 25 people in there if you crowded in.
According to local lore, the remotely located lodge became a popular brothel for several years back in the 40's.
It is said that whenever there was word of an impending raid by the law, the ladies & patrons would conceal themselves inside the wall on the hidden staircase & wait until the authorities were all upstairs, before sneaking down & out of the back service door, and then quickly dispersing into the surrounding swampland.
Good Lore 🧡
I once toured a lovely craftsman style home in the Altadena, CA area. The kitchen had a vented cabinet with mesh shelves. The natural circulation of air from crawlspace to the attic cooled the cabinet contents.
My parents rented a small bungalow house in Pasadena that had that too, my mom used to keep the butter in there, it kept it at an easily spreadable temperature.
During my childhood, we lived in a beautiful over 100 years old farm house. Loved the pocket doors. Our coal chute was designed to not just allow the coal to chute into the house but to allow the buckets of coal ash to be hoisted out. My parents poured the ash onto the driveway. It worked great to keep mud and dust down. Also didn't have to pay for rock lol. However, as a kid, it wasn't pleasant to cross when barefoot and you sure didn't want to fall on it when running and playing lol. But I think houses today should also bring back the beautiful handcrafted built in China cabinets and bookcases.
We used to hide down in the coal chute when the tornado sirens went off growing up! That house also had beautiful built in buffets and drawers in the walls! Wonderful house!
Thank you for watching and sharing your memories of the home where you grew up.
Love built ins
My parents' house (built 1941) had a plug on the living room wall by the baseboard. It connected to an antenna that ran under the floorboards of the attic; they could hook up the radio to it. (The 1940s equivalent of a cable TV connection.)
The house also came with double concrete laundry tubs in the basement, one of which had a built-in washboard. Back then, laundry might still be done by hand; the tub with the washboard was for washing, and the tub next to it was for rinsing. Really luxurious versions had three tubs: wash, rinse, and rinse again.
attached to the rinse tub would be a wringer to squeeze out the excess water before hanging the clothes on the line. Today we've become used to our automatic washers that spin out the excess water.
@@karenryder6317 I remember Mom's tub washer, which had a power wringer on top. She caught her fingers in it more than once, which wasn't a pleasant experience.
@@Gail1Marie That's where they get the phrase, "You look like you've been through the wringer!"
@@jenniferp1917 Exactly! My mom never let me near hers, but I did use a hand-cranked wringer at the YMCA to wring the water out of my swimsuit (sort of a proto-suit spinner).
I remember living in an old home as a child and it had an ironing board that came out from the wall with room inside there to keep an iron. It also had a built-in electric heater in the bathroom wall. Some lights were turned on and off with a string hanging from the bulb and the toilet was flushed with a chain. Bread boards were built into all countertops when I was a child. Dough was rolled out on it but it was also used as a cutting board for all foods. No one had a separate cutting board for meat.
Yes, i have seen ironing boards in the walls of many Chicago-style bungalows, they were fun and very convenient. I would say, bring this feature back, it is just not too many people are ironing anything now.
They sell fold out ironing boards at home depot....keep up with the times, will ya?!
Cupboards with built-in bread boards are still very common in the new houses in northern Europe. But definitely it is good idea only to cut bread on it and use a separate cutting board(s) for other stuff.
@@_Diana_S Yes, I gave it up years ago. I think the fabrics of my youth were more wrinkled out of the dryer. Maybe the dryers of the day did that.
Yep, we had an ironing board nook too!
I once tried to rent a historic house that had its very own 'Present Wrapping Room'. Yes that's right a whole room dedicated to wrapping presents. You don't see that feature very often.
Where I live in the Midwest USA they are quite common in expensive new houses. That's interesting that they're historical.
@@alexanders3963 Goodness me! I just Googled 'Present Wraping Room' and there are pages and pages of interior designs for them in the USA. Who knew? We don't have them now in the UK (well OK maybe Russian oligarch houses do). That house I looked at though was very old and very unusual. It had its own room sized security vault, a ghost and I had to open it to the public two days a year as a condition of renting. Needless to say, I passed.
@@brianthesnail3815 Trust me, they're rare in the US. I only heard of them from an episode of Frasier
I lived in a couple of apts in southern California that had mail drops inside by the front door, covered by an ornate metal door. Liked those a lot. Especially the ease of retrieval of your mail.
I owned a house built in 1897 that had some very cool things throughout it. There was this tiny 'room' on the 2nd floor with an oval shaped window and yes it had a door. I was never able to sort out just what that room was to be used for....Thanks for the great video. Personally I like old houses better than newer ones, especially the amazing woodwork in them.
I lived in San Francisco,.... and there was a tiny room too on the second floor , but they called it the fainting room. Women would pass out after climbing the stairs in their tight corsets, and needed a place to rest,... hence the name fainting room.
I lived in an older home that had a small narrow room (with a door) that was called a rocking room. A room to rock a crying baby while the grown ups talked out in the parlor.
my house had a small room the size if a closet, but with a large windiw in it. During some remodeling, I removed the trim from around the door. On the back of the trim, the carpenter had written "sewing room" in pencil in order to keep track of which doorway it had been cut to fit.
I have seen many of these things, but the question I always had was how they would empty the razor blade slots you answered my question, they don't. Thanks for this very interesting video Rhetty
My late parents built a house around 1939 that had that feature. You'd unbolt the medicine cabinet, and dump out the used blades that were kept in a metal tray.
Remodeler here, I’ve ran into this quite often. The back of the med cabinet would have a slot, sometimes I would find hundreds of blades laying in the stud cavity, only way to get to them is to completely open the wall all the way to the studs.
Yes it just collects and collects. Sometimes they are stuck behind the cabinet or are down at the bottom of the wall. Other times they are all the way on the ground. It can also be a mix. Thank you for watching!
O very cool.. I live in Texas where I've seen just about all of these always wondered what that slot was for in the medicine cabinet!!!! Neato mosquito!!!
But who thought that was a good thing?!? Talk about denial....out of sight is out of mind?!? Crazy they didn't think that through! It isn't even like they would degrade or something, just wow!
I still use the old boot scraper outside my house (plus a large old nail to get the mud from the treads of my boots). They are still good for the outdoorsy people.
Also, I installed pocket doors in my home (having known about them from the old house I grew up in). I’m also having them installed in the new house I’ve designed.
If the starship Enterprise can have pocket doors, why not modern homes?
Now if we could just get the automatic door sensors and actuators to work better than a Star Trek blooper reel, we'd be in clover.