I live in an 1883 Eastlake house. We have servants quarters, coal room, lath & plaster, and there was a small butler's pantry. We also had a floor button in the dining room to call servants, and have a turntable in the garage, for carriages and/or early cars without reverse gear.
Awesome! I have an Eastlake dresser, that was my mom's, and a marble topped Eastlake dresser that came from my father's side of the family. Hopefully, I'll be able to have them properly restored one day soon.
@schnauzersareawesome7209 Would love to see your home. You don't happen to have a link to some photos? Better yet, make a video of it and post it on RUclips!
Living in a home that was not only the 2nd home built on my street, at one point was a brewery, and is 140 years old. I have a butler's pantry, transom windows, original hardwood floors, pocket doors, coal shoot, the original metal ornate doorbell in my front door that when you turn it rings to alert of visitor, lathe and slat walls, knob and tube wiring(until 5yrs ago when I was finally able to update), 10 foot ceilings, and a beautiful ornate fireplace with original mirror built in mantle piece. It also has a huge attic fan. When days are hot I open door to attic (located in kitchen with steep steps) and open windows. The attic fan pulls air in through windows and out the attic like an exhaust fan. It is amazing how little I use my air conditioner. Will say the lack of having closets in a home this old are a negative but the craftmanship and detail of the rest of it lend it character I love.
I can imagine how grand home is 😃🥰 I love older homes, I’m especially drawn to Victorians. They don’t make em like they used to, as they say 😁 What about some beautiful Armoires? 🤔👗👔👖🧥👚👕🧣
I'm a Gen-Xer, and I remember the knob & tube wiring, and coal chutes. I also lived in a place that had to have the gas lighting system permanently disconnected when having the house rewired to bring it up to code. A friend lived in a house that had servants passages and servants quarters. We had a lot of fun playing hide and seek, and roaming within the walls of the house. There were stairs that went to closets of other rooms, and even a bookshelf door in the parlor. We'd play Scooby Doo, where are you in that house. When I was growing up, almost everyone I knew, including my family, had phone nooks. Something else I don't see anymore is cold radiators where cold water was pumped through the hot water heating system for air conditioning in the Summer. The return water was returned like a waterfall through a screen in the basement before being sucked back through the pump. There were long pans under the radiators that collected the condensation and had to be emptied every day. Also, I remember a loft in some houses that, if the loft windows were open during the day, the warm air would escape from the loft like a chimney, and would suck air in the open windows downstairs to help with cooling the house. This is all stuff I don't see anymore, but was still around in the 70's when I was growing up.
I’m 69 yrs old. I lived in a house with a coal room . My father turned it into a play area for me and my sister. We spent many happy hours in there. ❤❤ Thanks daddy
We had a coal chute, coal room and a boiler in the basement. We didn't have a milk door but when I (and my mother before me) as a child went on my maternal grandfather's milk route in Beaver Dam, many did through the 70s and into the 80s.
I was raised in a house with a coal room and we used it to store fruit while mother was canning. The room was big enough to hold about a year and a half of coal.
Milk doors: I was raised on a farm and if our milk got sour we fed it to the pigs or chickens. Our cows produced up to 7 gallons of milk per day per cow.
The house I grew up in had a speaking tube that ran from the 2nd floor master bedroom down to the old maid's quarters in the basement. As kids, we had fun playing with it.
One of my grandparents' houses had a coal chute and laundry chute, and the other grandparents' house had a butler's pantry I used to love to explore! Old houses have wonderful features that you don't usually see. My house has a laundry chute and a post gas light in the front that i changed to solar. Too expensive to change over! Thanks for the great video!
My cousins had a laundry chute in their childhood home. We had endless fun dropping toys down into the laundry basket three floors down in the basement.
My one stepsister almost got stuck in ours. We would have laughed but we thought she'd die so my sister, other stepsister and I screamed until my dad and stepmother went to the rescue. We also threw all manner of things down that chute just to watch it fall.
My sister fell down the chute when she was a baby - somehow was completely unharmed, landing on the gigantic pile of laundry (which was on a concrete floor) and somehow missed the 2-inch nails sticking out from the sides of the chute
@@kittycake713 yeah what was with all those nails? Ours had them too. Sometimes an article of clothing would get hung up on them and Dad would be fishing in the chute with a broom...
Who remembers the MILKMAN and the small, insulated aluminum boxes with lids on the back porch? Who got the cream that used to float to the top of the milk bottle in your house?
I remember the milk man and the iceman. He wore a yellow plastic slicker or raincoat and wore big gloves. He carried this huge chunk of ice using big tongs and would place the ice in our icebox! 🧊
I’m tickled to have 8 of these in my home built way back in 1900! We found knob and tube wiring in the attic when we bought the house that was still active, both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. In addition, we have 3 double fireplaces, 12 ft ceilings and 3 double doors across the front of our home. I love living in a home so full of history and sometimes wonder what life was like over 120 years ago.
You have way more than my 1904 house did. It did have lathe and plaster and elegant curves, built in glass and wood cabinets, and the most amazing fireplace. It had grates on both sides and the top that threw out so much heat if you made a fire too big it would run you out of the room! Later, I lived in a 100 year old farmhouse that still had knob and tube wiring in the walls, but not the attic. When a smart meter was installed, I had to move because the knob and tube wiring created massive magnetic fields that caused me intense pain. There are apparently a lot of old houses especially in the NE that still use knob and tube wiring. Some people immediately replace it, but others keep it if they feel it is safe enough.
My husband's grandfather built the house we currently live in. Built in the early 30s, it has many of the features from this video. His grandmother always called her refrigerator, an ice box 💓💓
My Great Grandparents, Grandparents and now parents house has a coal room and chute. By the time my brother and I came around we used it as a wood room and chute for the wood furnace. We also have a laundry chute 😊
I lived in a house with a clawfoot bathtub. I would slide a can of Sterno on an insulated pot protector under the tub. The water would stay deliciously hot for 50 minutes!
100% A space for the ironing board, a cubbie for the iron, and a second cubbie for the garment steamer. And an in-wall hidden closet, simply press on the magnetic slot, and it reveals the foldable hanger and hangers neatly side by side. Since most families never have the space to prepare or hang the clothes afterward and get wrinkled again. When I own my first home, I'm thinking of adding this fun addition by the bedroom, hallway, or laundry room.
@embry639 My house was built in 1990 and has an in wall ironing board that you'd have to have a SERIOUS eating disorder to use. It's about ten inches away from one wall and about 18" away from the front of the dryer. When we moved in it was missing the board, so I put in shelves and used it to hold spare laundry supplies
@@hameley12I've said our next home will have a washer and dryer in the master closet, or at the very least a stacking unit so we don't have to carry laundry through the kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom to put it away
@@michellereynolds8979I do. I like having pressed shirts . I wear alot of cotton and linen because synthetics never get clean enough for me in the wash and make me sweat . I also have drying racks so my cloths last longer and to save the environment. They come out wrinkly dried that way another reason to iron
My goodness I must be over a 199 as I remember lots of those. It’s funny to think how things change. Then become in fashion and used. The baths were long enough and deep enough to float. The Dutch doors now mostly called stable door are all with my lifetime. I watched my dad take down the picture rails. As we sat cutting off the edges on wallpaper and making flour and water to make paste. I remember gas lighting as caravans had them the shout if you broke one. I really enjoyed that. When in my thirties working with the elderly, I thought what wonderful stories to children. Then talking about it just a little while ago. It dawned on me I’m one of these resources lol
I have a claw foot bath I salvaged when the house next door was demolished. I thought I would get it restored but the cost was too high. I now grow veggies in it. b❤
. Our front door was divided into two doors but still only the size of an ordinary front door. I remember thinking it was really funny that we had to open both doors to let someone in.
I'm currently owner-building my own designed, and drafted, steel SIP house. All passed by council and ready to go! As an ol' fashioned kinda gal, I've added so many things that are in this video😆❤: 3 metre ceilings, Dado, picture rail, and top shelf throughout. Laundry chute. Transom windows. Sleepout porch/parlour room. Boot scrapers, claw foot tub, butlers pantry, wash stands and now I wanna witches window😆✅️
It sounds like your home is going to be amazing, would love to see it. You speaking about the council make me think you're British. My fiance is British I'd love to go there someday. Well that's enough of me babbling. Good luck with your home. I hope it comes out just as amazing as it sounds.
@@opybrook7766There are standards conversion apps, by the way the meseautements we Americans use has a real name. It's called Empirical measurement. We should be offering metric measurements to the rest of the civilized world when we post. We are in the minority as we chose to remain Empirical as the rest of the world and the sciences went metric. If offered the choice between a Gallon and a Liter for the same price, choose the Liter. You get more for the dollar that way.
@briankocheraabcdt4628 I'm Aussie, and even though we are metric now, I still use imperial when talking about shipping containers, beer glass size, outdoor fences, boat length, my height, the amount of water in my tanks, and even the length of a mans, well, nevermind... all I am saying, is that imperial is still useful sometimes.😁
We live in a house that was built in 1897, one of the 1st homes in our small town. We have a staircase in the wall that leads to what was once the servants quarters. The original doors with door bells, a clock in the wall, transom windows original wood floors, door frames & many more features. It is such a beautiful home & the history here some of which we will never know.
I grew up in a home that had most of these Features "A Georgian beauty" with 14 rooms , dumb waiters, front dutch door, ball and claw tubs, butlers pantry , grand fireplaces , mahogany wood beams , maids quarters , ball room complete with a player piano, crystal chandlers, slot doors into the dining room, a grand sweeping staircase and it was also haunted as hell.!!!..........its been 50+ yrs but, I still on occasion walk through my now demolished childhood home in dreams 😓 I still miss it so.........
My inlaws live in a home from the 1700's and it has all that except they had to have bathrooms installed because the house had none, it only had an outhouse. Their home has been in many magazines and is stunning. Nothing like an old home. It's so sad when they tear them down. They don't make them like they used to, that's for sure!
Laundry chute: "Imagine the convenience of ... letting your laundry disappear... only to reappear clean and folded in the laundry room." Excuse me! It wasn't the magical laundry chute that washed and folded your clothes, it was your mom!
It was my sister’s. My mother was always working at her business. My sisters spoiled me so much. They washed my cloths and folded them and even put them at the foot of my bed on my bed chest. They would have dinner cooked by time mother came home if she came home that night.
I have a boot scraper, and I miss sleeping porches. I was raised in a home with one on the second floor. It was wonderful all summer long and well into the autumn. Even after AC my sister and I used it.
My house was built at the turn of the century, and when we went to see it, we really didn't plan on buying it. That all changed when I saw the laundry chute, unpainted original woodwork, and hardwood throughout the house. Bonus! We got it for an unbelievable price in 2017 ($43,000).
Appliances were not manufactured during WWII because of the war. I was born in 1943 & have a lot of memories from my very early childhood. I lived in an apartment with my mom, her mom, sister, & 4F brother until my dad & aunt’s husband returned from the army. I remember the ice box in our kitchen - backed up to the outside wall which had a hole large enough to accept the large block of ice. My then husband & I bought a 2 flat in the late 1970’s that had been built in 1873. The bathrooms contained claw foot tubs. When we pulled the tubs away from the wall so we could paint, my daughters were fascinated to see that the manufacturing date had been cast into the back of the tub - October 1913 - 2 months before grandma had been born!
In the '70s, my godparents in Ohio had a clothes chute built into a wall in the corridor near the bedrooms on the main floor. This chute led directly to an open hamper in the basement laundry room.
I read elsewhere that they could act as chimneys if there was a fire, causing a fire to spread faster. I did have to 'hmmm' at the tile surrounding the chute in the floor, as it's what I have in my bathroom, just a different color.
What about summer kitchens? a room on the back of the house with lots of windows to bring breezes in summer, where you had a stove and sink for summertime cooking. There was a broom/mop/rake closet and a half-bath so you could clean up before coming into the house. We also had a hidden side garden, between the house and the garage, where the clothes lines were. You could hang clothes out here without them being seen from the street. It helped that this side garden had climbing roses, lilacs and honeysuckle, so your clothes and linens smelled AMAZING.
My home has many of these items. We replaced the remaining knob and tube wiring before we moved in and we have covered the plaster walls with thin sheet rock since they were cracked. We still have the coal chute in the basement ( the furnace was converted to gas before we bought the house)and a laundry chute in the original bathroom…love it! Another thing I love are the picture rails, so easy to hang art!
My '63 house has a outdoor gas post light, it was turned off (somewhere) during the Carter energy crisis, so I don't know where it should have been reconnected to make it work. A couple years ago when the gas meter was replaced they asked if I wanted to keep the connection to it, and I said No, so it's not coming back now anyway.
I remember many of these. But you failed to mention Murphy beds. I lived in a couple homes and several apartment that had them. At night it was a bedroom, but during the day it could be a sewing room(hobby room), a parlor, a play room, even a living room... essentially anything you could think of that you needed. And the bed was hidden in the wall behind a set of door to transform back into a bedroom at night.
@RoverClover yes they are very good. Best I can recall i stayed in half a dozen homes the had them built into the wall. Most of Hehe had several in each place. One was usually in the front room(living room) and the others in a bedroom. From the age of the houses I know that the wives back then would run a businesses from them, dress making, quilting, hair dressing were popular choice by historical reports. All these buildings were pre ww2. I suppose the construction boom after the war helped to eliminate them.
My grandparents lived in a small mansion with a ballroom and servant quarters on the third floor. In the basement, there was a Ben Franklin stove for the maintenance man to keep warm by shoveling coal into the boiler. There were also servant stairs that we weren't allowed to use and a beautiful built-in cabinet in the formal dining room. All the woodwork was beautiful, and both the living room and dining room had heavy pocket doors. The house still stands, but the beautiful stained glass windows in the dining room are gone when I stop to see the house. I knocked, but there was no answer, so I wondered if they kept many of its features. The home was built for an heiress in the early 20th century, and my mom took dance lessons there, heard that it was going on sale, and went home two doors down the street. She told her dad, and he bought it back in the 30s.
My family has a cabin that was built over a hundred years ago that had an ice box built into the kitchen cupboards. It still had the old ice pick in it. Though it's just an empty cupboard now i enjoy that is there. Also the wooden counters have grooves carved into them that get deeper as they get closer to the sink to divert water to the sink. This seems very practical but I've never seen such a feature anywhere else.
I grew up in a house that had a sleep porch, a coal shoot/room, phone nook, a laundry shoot and a milk door. Dad turned the coal room into a workshop, as we had a gas furnace.
I'm watching this and reflecting on how many childhood memories it evokes. I spent most of my early years with my grandparents, who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s in older homes. Even when they built their own houses, they incorporated many elements from their past and included family furniture/ items. I'm grateful the algorithm brought me here.
There was two on this list that I have in my home circa 1950’s: a blade slot in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom and a telephone niche in my hallway. There were also two I had never heard of: witches windows and California coolers.
I miss the second floor laundry chute. A broom closet at the back door. We had a milk chute. If we got locked out - mom would feed one of us through the milk chute and we would open the door.
We called ours a milk chute. It later had to be bolted shut after our Detroit home was broken into through it. I built a clothes chute in my current home. Put your clothes into a cabinet in our master bathroom and it drops into another cabinet in the laundry room. I also built transom windows in a couple rooms.
OMG I feel 8000 years old because I know what these things are , either because I am smart or because I am not the sort to sit around just not wondering what something is, but figuring it out.
I was born in 1962, and though I watch old movies, and take in every new thing that I've never seen before, even noticing furniture stylings and architectural things of all times, I have never come across a milk door. I know about coal chutes and dumbwaiters, I even know what a pie safe is, but this is the first I've ever heard of a milk door. Now I have to go search the internet to see if this is an American thing or not. Maybe it's just a Northeastern, and maybe Northern thing, as a measure of keeping the milk from freezing before the people get up to retrieve it into the house. I'm just thinking because Time Marches On and since building practices became a bit more streamlined, in the market fluctuated and would being cheaper than brick and so on and so forth these things were just simply left out as Americans spread out across the countryside. This would explain why I had never come across one, due to my age. But I cannot figure since my tastes are wide and eclectic why I have never come across the mention of a milk door or seen one in a movie. It is reasonable to assume that because any mention of a Milkman in a movie has some sort of dialogue with the lady of the house, that it would be anticlimactic for there to be a milk door in the side of the house, wish you would have no chance to converse with the milkman -- although, I do think it could be pretty funny to have the lady of the house bending over to talk through a milk door, and the husband coming in to see his wife bent over I'm making a quip.
@@kayceegreer4418 We had a milk chute. I still feel awful about dropping a glass gallon jug of milk and the mess it made. :( Once when the neighbors locked themselves out of the house, I was small enough to wiggle through the milk chute and unlock the door. We also had a laundry chute -- very handy. Now we don't even have a basement.
The house I grew up in, in Burbank CA, had a milk door, razor blade slot, also a match holder in the kitchen, a built in ironing board, and before I was born, had a swamp cooler and an icebox. It was built in 1937. The house I currently live in, in Maine, has a butler's pantry, lath and plaster walls (the plaster has horse hair in it), and side lights on either side of the front door. There was at one time an old coal burning boiler in the basement but no coal chute. I have a modern heating oil boiler now. It's a Dutch colonial so I'm surprised no Dutch door. It was built in 1929.
Oh, I lived in 2 homes with built in ironing boards. My mom ironed a lot so those were handy. We lived in 1 house with a kitchen match dispenser on the wall, it was pretty.
Grandparents house had phone nook with a triangular chair with three legs. And there was still an icebox on the back porch. And my neighbor had a laundry chute and my friend showed me and I kept sliding down and come back upstairs and slide down again. And another friend had central vacuum in their house so you just had a long hose with attachment to carry from room to room to vac the floor. There was the dust bin mounted in the garage that got emptied every couple weeks.
I knew everything except the California cooler. We had milk delivered (Elsie the Bordon Cow) and a Hostess truck with cupcakes and Twinkies back when they were good. (Gotta love that lard!)
I grew up in 1970's Arizona. We definitely had "coolers" on our roof. However, I have never heard the term "California Cooler." I have heard "swamp cooler" in the lower midwest and south. Whatever you call them, the visuals shown did not include one. Lol 😂
My grandfather updated their porch into a screened in porch in the 90s. Of course my grandparents grew up in the Great Depression and he built his own house when he retired from the marine corps (WW2-Vietnam) on his own cattle ranch. We loved sleeping out there and cuddled around the fireplace and cast iron stove during the winter. We also had friends who had laundry shoots, a central all house vacuuming system, and intercom system throughout the entire house (80s-90s). I also had an old Victorian home that use to be oil heated but had a huge attic fan used to circulate the air all year round. It had to be cleaned when I got it from all the burned oil residue on it. Loved having a turret tower and foyer. Still see boot scrapers used especially in the rural areas of my state. Use to see transom windows all over the place when I was growing up in the 80s especially in government buildings and offices. We had them in our barracks in Germany (00-20s) and was in my apartments when I lived in Europe because they’re still used (also main windows either tilt or open like a door and have a steel roll down shutter). Also had picture rails where I forgot and left several items hanging from them. We used swamp coolers in Iraq and have seen them for sale with a tag line that some engineer figured out how to cool a house for pennies with some new technology but is just a small swamp cooler.
Lived in housed with most of these. Including the wire and knob electric. Also Pre asbestos and fiberglass plaster had horse hair in it for reinforcing. A lot of plaster from the 50s to 70s has asbestos so be careful. My dads house still had the old gaslights on the wall but they were disconnected. I feel old.
Fascinating-hadn’t heard of plaster with horsehair! I do have bedroom furniture over 100 years old, with a small chair and a vanity stool that have their seats filled with horsehair!
I was born in 1946 and we lived about 4 blocks South from the Main Street and our Drug store was on a corner of the Main Street and the cross street called 8th Street. We would walk down there for the first 4 years of my life and that had a counter with revolving stools where you get ice cream treats and soft drinks in the curved glasses serve in metal cradles with a finger holes. In the ceiling there were multiple ceiling fans with lights. It was styled on the outside with English Tudor cross beams and off white stucco. I thought the drugstore was so amazing, it was the most attractive business. I remember all of those things existing because my mother told me about everything but by the time I was small Grandma converted from a coal furnace to a natural gas furnace and she kept her icebox and stored things in it rather than throwing it away after she bought a refrigerator. She only had a wringer washer and a clothes line for laundry and a big old gas stove that had the oven up higher on tall legs and it was black and white. Then she bought a boxy style more modern shaped gas stove. The kitchen sink was very long but not very deep. She washed dishes by setting a dishpan in the sink and sit on a stool washing dishes. Her house had a built in China cabinet in the kitchen and it had a swinging door. There was a butler pantry to keep the dining pieces for the dining room and big sliding doors between the parlor and dining room.
My 100 year old craftsman house has remnants of a lot of these. I had to replace the knob and tube when I bought the house, mostly because the DIY Romex added in the 50s was deteriorating and dangerous. Gas lighting fixtures, some that had been converted using said Romex, are still on the walls. Being a one story house, some features weren’t needed, but I could really use a boot scraper coming in from gardening because the mudroom wall was removed making a larger kitchen. One thing not mentioned is a little door at the bottom of the chimney. It’s for removing ashes from the fireplace. Instead of shoveling them into a bucket, you sweep them into a hole down at the back of the fireplace. That hole is accessible from the outside where you can hang your bucket and scoop them in. I mix them into my compost.
I think we had most of them in our houses. There’s also a reason that the ceilings in old houses are 12-14 feet. Heat rises and it keeps the house cooler in the summer. The Amish still build their houses that way. Old houses also have no closets, only a box called a wardrobe to hang up their clothes. Tax accessors considered closets to be a room and assessed higher taxes.
I was hoping to see a Murphy Bed. I have always been fascinated by them and of course the dumb waiter when I was a child. Radiators for heat. My sister's house in Maine had them.
I lived in a big old brick house built around 1820. All the records were destroyed in a fire so no exact date. We had servants quarters with a back stairway into the kitchen, push button light switches, pocket doors, the original front door hardware and key, a brass door bell, a winding staircase, original wood floors. But the coolest thing was a wooden bathtub with a tin lining. The plumber said he never saw another one like it in all his years of plumbing. I miss that house!
@peterbaruxis2511 half of the switches didn't go to anything but they looked so cool. I forgot we had a dumbwaiter too and a big old attic filled with bats and antique furniture and a spooky basement filled with all kinds of neat old stuff - glass, pottery etc etc etc.
Thank you. I enjoyed many of these treasures. We also had a door opener in our home. If you were upstairs you just pulled a lever to open the front door below. The front door had a window so you could see who you wanted to let in.
I lived in an older home for 9.5 years with my husband and children. It had a boot scraper and a laundry chute. As our winters were rainy, the scraper was very useful. My kids loved the laundry chute. The litlest ones would drop through it onto the pile of laundry in the basement.
My home still has some knob and tube wiring, unused of course. My understanding is that it was no longer used after 1910. Looks cool, it's in my kitchen. The furnace in my basement looks like it's from 1910. Lol. Thanks for the video...be well, friend. ✌️
x 0:48 There was one of those crank phones on the tv series Lassie! o In Lincoln, Nebraska there is a telephone museum (props from the museum were used on the movie Yes Man). x 3:11 It would be awesome to have a milkman and a milkdoor for him to leave the milk bottles! x 4:59 A sleeping porch sounds really comfortable! x 9:46 Those parlor rooms are super fascinating! x 12:45 There was a Dutch Door in the movie Funny Farm! x 14:48 Witchcraft windows! o First time I have heard of those, they are probably popular in Salem, Massachusetts! x 18:14 I am totally sold on laundry chutes!
A sleeping porch would be cool to have if you come home drunk and don't want to come in and wake up people. Or if it's summer and you want to sleep outside.
Everyone in my neighborhood still has a sleeping porch, although many go unused or are storage areas I use mine quite frequently for a work area in the summer.
We used to live on the first floor of an old apartment building. There was a milk door in the hallway that was still usable inside, but was covered over outside. In the bathroom was a covered-over laundry chute that was no longer usable, and a clawfoot tub that we did use right up until we moved.
My inlaws live in a historical home built in the 1700's. In the living room there was the small door, but it wasn't a coal chute, it was a door to slide the coffins into the house for viewing. The viewings used to be done right in the home, not a funeral home. They also had to have bathrooms put in because there were only outhouses back then. Their home is absolutely stunning. They put so much work into it. It was in House Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens and a few other home magazines. At Christmas, they would have tours through their home. My husband and I married there over 30 years ago. It was a beautiful wedding! I miss the way houses used to be built. They were built well and had character, nowadays, everyone has cookie cutter houses, like mine. Older homes are beautiful imo. I knew about all these things and even had a razor blade slot in my bathroom! The funniest thing that this video made me realize is that I'm old!! I miss the old days, especially celebrating Christmas in the parlor and all our relatives!! I just wish could go back and do it all over again! It brings mist to my eyes when I think about how those days are long gone. As I age, I find myself being very nostalgic and longing for those day when life was so much more simple. 😢
WOW on the coffin door. I've seen antique tables called Coffin Tables, I guess they would have been a good height to display the coffins in the home. I didn't know about the razor blade wall storage until I saw this video. I bet your wedding was really special!
I thought the same thing craig. Some friends still have these features in their home today. One has several. A friend lives in the main farm house of a whole area that today is a whole neighborhood their family sold the property to.
Lived in a few houses as a kid that had a phone nock, my grandparents had the old style electrical wiring (eventually it got changed), 1st house I ever bought had the lathe & plaster walls (it was built in 1907). Oh the swamp coolers, my grandma used these my whole childhood as did my mom. Laundry shutes my children all find these fascinating. Also loved in many houses with not scraper, might need to hunt one down for my current house to add a detail of charm. Never seen a witches window- May need to incorporate one into my house.
My old ‘stalinka’ apartment in Kherson had a 2 meter thick wall. My dad and grandpa spent over a week chiseling out a nook for the phone and mirror. I hope that house is still there…
I live in a house built in 1885, I've got these in the list: Coal Doors Knob and Tube Wiring Parlour Room Clawfoot Tub Gaslight Fixtures I have a few hatches that I don't know what they are... they look like the Coal Doors, but on the inside away from where the coal is stored.
Great Vids! Just to point out that the kind of Parlors that you describe were only for show to guests, and had all the finest furniture, art and décor. But they were not the room where the family lived. The 'family parlor' was a much more simple , smaller room, with more utilitarian furniture that served as the living space for the family. All the fancy stuff in the so called 'front' 'guest' parlor was too valuable to expose to daily wear and tear from the family. Of course if the family could afford a piano or pipe organ, that would be in the fancy 'front' parlor and be used by the family even when there were no guests. About bathrooms and servants: when indoor plumbing was made available to the middle class you would see two bathrooms becoming the standard for the middle class homes. But these two bathrooms were not both for the family, The bathroom on the family bedroom floor was for the family, but the second bathroom, usually part of the servants quarters or in the basement of the house was only for the servants. Class segregating even in bathroom usage was considered the norm. Keep up the great work!
The "front parlor" was often elaborately decorated and used only when there was an important visitor. The children were NOT allowed in except on special occasions, so it was not the center of family activity. The kitchen in large Victorian homes was often in the basement, and a dumbwaiter was used to transport food and dishes upstairs to the dining room. Claw foot tubs are valued by some pretentious decorators today, but they are a nuisance to clean under and behind, and a hot tub of water cools rapidly.
In 1969 we lived in a suburban area just outside of Baltimore City. The area was getting a little rough, so Ma and Daddy went to a realtor, and before my sister and I knew it we were packing for a grand adventure called "moving". Daddy moved us to a big beautiful house out in the country. Instead of rowhouses as far as the eye could see, our new neighborhood had only ten individual houses, and ours was the only one with a Dutch door. On rare occasions when Ma wasn't looking I would drape myself over the bottom half and swing back and forth. Our own separate house, being country girls now, and a Dutch door! It was almost more excitement than a seven year old could take.
Our home had the coal shuttle and door outside We had a butlers pantry and a large glassed in Porch, beautiful wooden floors. Oh and the laundry door to the basement. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
In the mid fifties my folks bought a 1929 house near Pittsburgh PA. The house had 13 rooms, 6 bathrooms, and 3 floors, not counting the basement. The third floor was the servants quarters, though we had no servants. They had two large bedrooms, a full bath and a kitchen. The house had a laundry chute, a coal bun for the original coal fired boiler. Electricity service was unreliable n 1929 so the house had both electric lights but also gas lights in most rooms. There was a butler’s pantry. We were very middle class,with no servants, but it was fun to live in the kind of house that had it not been in a somewhat remote area would have been impossible for us to afford.
I grew up in the 70s, and our first house had a Laundry Shute which was fun to play with as a mischievous boy. My mom would be in the basement and I'd lower a big rubber spider down the Laundry shute and scare her. 🤣🤣🤣 My grandparents had a house with Pocket Doors, Dutch Doors, and a Mike Door. Very cool features.😊
Not one of those pictures/videos was a swamp cooler by the way. Those were wine coolers. A swamp cooler was a big machine outside of the house that used running water to cool the house. My grandma had one. Those were not it…
Another purpose of picture rails was to prevent damage to the plaster. Driving a nail into plaster might cause a big scab of plaster to fall off, or you might drive the nail into a gap between the wooden laths behind the plaster, and have to try again.
My grandparents’ home had most of those features: maid’s personal stairway and room above the kitchen, maid’s pantry between the kitchen and the dining room, cast iron stove with wood box behind it, icebox outside,next to the kitchen door, ornamental copper ceiling in the kitchen, plastered walls, etc.
My childhood home had an attic fan. Before AC, the fan would draw cooler air in through the windows into the attic where it would escape through vents in the eaves. I spent many an hour napping on a quilt under that fan!
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I live in an 1883 Eastlake house. We have servants quarters, coal room, lath & plaster, and there was a small butler's pantry. We also had a floor button in the dining room to call servants, and have a turntable in the garage, for carriages and/or early cars without reverse gear.
Wow
How cool is that!
@@lightwarrior432 agreed!
Awesome!
I have an Eastlake dresser, that was my mom's, and a marble topped Eastlake dresser that came from my father's side of the family.
Hopefully, I'll be able to have them properly restored one day soon.
Can I visit ☺️
@schnauzersareawesome7209 Would love to see your home. You don't happen to have a link to some photos? Better yet, make a video of it and post it on RUclips!
Living in a home that was not only the 2nd home built on my street, at one point was a brewery, and is 140 years old. I have a butler's pantry, transom windows, original hardwood floors, pocket doors, coal shoot, the original metal ornate doorbell in my front door that when you turn it rings to alert of visitor, lathe and slat walls, knob and tube wiring(until 5yrs ago when I was finally able to update), 10 foot ceilings, and a beautiful ornate fireplace with original mirror built in mantle piece. It also has a huge attic fan. When days are hot I open door to attic (located in kitchen with steep steps) and open windows. The attic fan pulls air in through windows and out the attic like an exhaust fan. It is amazing how little I use my air conditioner. Will say the lack of having closets in a home this old are a negative but the craftmanship and detail of the rest of it lend it character I love.
That sounds amazing would love to see photos
In later years, my grandmother used the sleeping porch as a closet. Yeah, those closets were small compared to the standard today.
I can imagine how grand home is 😃🥰
I love older homes, I’m especially drawn to Victorians.
They don’t make em like they used to, as they say 😁
What about some beautiful Armoires?
🤔👗👔👖🧥👚👕🧣
@@CrissyLynnB I would love to see your house. Just sounds so amazing!
I'm a Gen-Xer, and I remember the knob & tube wiring, and coal chutes. I also lived in a place that had to have the gas lighting system permanently disconnected when having the house rewired to bring it up to code.
A friend lived in a house that had servants passages and servants quarters. We had a lot of fun playing hide and seek, and roaming within the walls of the house. There were stairs that went to closets of other rooms, and even a bookshelf door in the parlor. We'd play Scooby Doo, where are you in that house.
When I was growing up, almost everyone I knew, including my family, had phone nooks.
Something else I don't see anymore is cold radiators where cold water was pumped through the hot water heating system for air conditioning in the Summer. The return water was returned like a waterfall through a screen in the basement before being sucked back through the pump. There were long pans under the radiators that collected the condensation and had to be emptied every day.
Also, I remember a loft in some houses that, if the loft windows were open during the day, the warm air would escape from the loft like a chimney, and would suck air in the open windows downstairs to help with cooling the house.
This is all stuff I don't see anymore, but was still around in the 70's when I was growing up.
I’m 69 yrs old. I lived in a house with a coal room . My father turned it into a play area for me and my sister. We spent many happy hours in there. ❤❤ Thanks daddy
My Grandpa used to drive his own coal truck after WWII. He delivered and shoveled coal to people's houses via those doors.
We had a coal chute, coal room and a boiler in the basement. We didn't have a milk door but when I (and my mother before me) as a child went on my maternal grandfather's milk route in Beaver Dam, many did through the 70s and into the 80s.
We turned ours into a downstairs bathroom. Still have the coal shoot door outside the bathroom window.
I was raised in a house with a coal room and we used it to store fruit while mother was canning. The room was big enough to hold about a year and a half of coal.
Milk doors: I was raised on a farm and if our milk got sour we fed it to the pigs or chickens. Our cows produced up to 7 gallons of milk per day per cow.
The house I grew up in had a speaking tube that ran from the 2nd floor master bedroom down to the old maid's quarters in the basement. As kids, we had fun playing with it.
I grew up having a claw foot tub. It was the best tub ever . I miss it
Same. So strange to have not had one since I was 15.
We had one of those. It was almost 7' long!
One of my grandparents' houses had a coal chute and laundry chute, and the other grandparents' house had a butler's pantry I used to love to explore! Old houses have wonderful features that you don't usually see. My house has a laundry chute and a post gas light in the front that i changed to solar. Too expensive to change over! Thanks for the great video!
My cousins had a laundry chute in their childhood home. We had endless fun dropping toys down into the laundry basket three floors down in the basement.
I have a laundry shoot today, and in my last house too.
My one stepsister almost got stuck in ours. We would have laughed but we thought she'd die so my sister, other stepsister and I screamed until my dad and stepmother went to the rescue. We also threw all manner of things down that chute just to watch it fall.
My sister fell down the chute when she was a baby - somehow was completely unharmed, landing on the gigantic pile of laundry (which was on a concrete floor) and somehow missed the 2-inch nails sticking out from the sides of the chute
@@kittycake713 yeah what was with all those nails? Ours had them too. Sometimes an article of clothing would get hung up on them and Dad would be fishing in the chute with a broom...
@@joyfulyes omg glad I’m not the only one 😭 they were terrifying-looking and seemingly served no purpose
Who remembers the MILKMAN and the small, insulated aluminum boxes with lids on the back porch? Who got the cream that used to float to the top of the milk bottle in your house?
I got the pleasure at my grandparents, miss those times😢
And you had to shake the bottle to make the cream at the top to get mixed in.
I always loved to talk to the milkman when I was little
I remember the milk man and the iceman. He wore a yellow plastic slicker or raincoat and wore big gloves. He carried this huge chunk of ice using big tongs and would place the ice in our icebox! 🧊
@@Colorbrush21cool!
I’m tickled to have 8 of these in my home built way back in 1900! We found knob and tube wiring in the attic when we bought the house that was still active, both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. In addition, we have 3 double fireplaces, 12 ft ceilings and 3 double doors across the front of our home. I love living in a home so full of history and sometimes wonder what life was like over 120 years ago.
Sounds like an awesome house!
You have way more than my 1904 house did. It did have lathe and plaster and elegant curves, built in glass and wood cabinets, and the most amazing fireplace. It had grates on both sides and the top that threw out so much heat if you made a fire too big it would run you out of the room! Later, I lived in a 100 year old farmhouse that still had knob and tube wiring in the walls, but not the attic. When a smart meter was installed, I had to move because the knob and tube wiring created massive magnetic fields that caused me intense pain. There are apparently a lot of old houses especially in the NE that still use knob and tube wiring. Some people immediately replace it, but others keep it if they feel it is safe enough.
@ Oh too cool!
Do you have the push button light switches? Push 1 button to turn the lights on, another button to turn them off. My grandparents house had them.
That sounds like a couple of houses I lived in growing up. The double fireplaces were great. We had one between the dining room and the ballroom
My husband's grandfather built the house we currently live in. Built in the early 30s, it has many of the features from this video. His grandmother always called her refrigerator, an ice box 💓💓
When we bought our Craftman house in 1984, we paid $30,000. for it. We had all this. Gosh i miss this house. Wish we never sold it 😢.
That house is probably $500k now
Oh, I love craftsman homes. 😊
Craftsman houses are amazing! I'd luv to live in one.
Id give someone $300,000 for a craftsman home and 1/4 an acre
My Great Grandparents, Grandparents and now parents house has a coal room and chute. By the time my brother and I came around we used it as a wood room and chute for the wood furnace. We also have a laundry chute 😊
I lived in a house with a clawfoot bathtub. I would slide a can of Sterno on an insulated pot protector under the tub. The water would stay deliciously hot for 50 minutes!
Thank you for a tip I never thought of. I LOVE clawfoot tubs and am determined to have another one someday!
@Grungefan2018 just make sure your clawfoot tub is cast iron. I've seen some that are fiberglass meant to look like cast iron.
The in-wall ironing board should be brought back. It's so much more convient than lugging an ironing board out of a closet.
I can't remember the last time I used an iron. I'm not sure people even own irons anymore.
100% A space for the ironing board, a cubbie for the iron, and a second cubbie for the garment steamer. And an in-wall hidden closet, simply press on the magnetic slot, and it reveals the foldable hanger and hangers neatly side by side.
Since most families never have the space to prepare or hang the clothes afterward and get wrinkled again. When I own my first home, I'm thinking of adding this fun addition by the bedroom, hallway, or laundry room.
@embry639 My house was built in 1990 and has an in wall ironing board that you'd have to have a SERIOUS eating disorder to use. It's about ten inches away from one wall and about 18" away from the front of the dryer. When we moved in it was missing the board, so I put in shelves and used it to hold spare laundry supplies
@@hameley12I've said our next home will have a washer and dryer in the master closet, or at the very least a stacking unit so we don't have to carry laundry through the kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom to put it away
@@michellereynolds8979I do. I like having pressed shirts . I wear alot of cotton and linen because synthetics never get clean enough for me in the wash and make me sweat . I also have drying racks so my cloths last longer and to save the environment. They come out wrinkly dried that way another reason to iron
My goodness I must be over a 199 as I remember lots of those. It’s funny to think how things change. Then become in fashion and used. The baths were long enough and deep enough to float. The Dutch doors now mostly called stable door are all with my lifetime. I watched my dad take down the picture rails. As we sat cutting off the edges on wallpaper and making flour and water to make paste.
I remember gas lighting as caravans had them the shout if you broke one. I really enjoyed that. When in my thirties working with the elderly, I thought what wonderful stories to children. Then talking about it just a little while ago. It dawned on me I’m one of these resources lol
I have a claw foot bath I salvaged when the house next door was demolished. I thought I would get it restored but the cost was too high. I now grow veggies in it. b❤
. Our front door was divided into two doors but still only the size of an ordinary front door. I remember thinking it was really funny that we had to open both doors to let someone in.
My first house was built in 1892. It had many of these features. And at least one friendly ghost.
I'm currently owner-building my own designed, and drafted, steel SIP house. All passed by council and ready to go! As an ol' fashioned kinda gal, I've added so many things that are in this video😆❤: 3 metre ceilings,
Dado, picture rail, and top shelf throughout. Laundry chute. Transom windows. Sleepout porch/parlour room. Boot scrapers, claw foot tub, butlers pantry, wash stands and now I wanna witches window😆✅️
It sounds like your home is going to be amazing, would love to see it. You speaking about the council make me think you're British. My fiance is British I'd love to go there someday. Well that's enough of me babbling. Good luck with your home. I hope it comes out just as amazing as it sounds.
Passed by Counsel ?? 🤔. Seeing you use meteric, you are clearly not American. What is your measurement in American Math? Thanks.
@@opybrook7766 3 metres is about 9.75 feet.
@@opybrook7766There are standards conversion apps, by the way the meseautements we Americans use has a real name. It's called Empirical measurement. We should be offering metric measurements to the rest of the civilized world when we post. We are in the minority as we chose to remain Empirical as the rest of the world and the sciences went metric. If offered the choice between a Gallon and a Liter for the same price, choose the Liter. You get more for the dollar that way.
@briankocheraabcdt4628 I'm Aussie, and even though we are metric now, I still use imperial when talking about shipping containers, beer glass size, outdoor fences, boat length, my height, the amount of water in my tanks, and even the length of a mans, well, nevermind... all I am saying, is that imperial is still useful sometimes.😁
When I was growing up we had a phone nook.
Everybody can listen in too
I loved asking the operator for information and connection, party lines were fun! I loved the phone nook with its window seat!
@@lynnholland8355Party lines were decidedly not fun, if you wanted to talk privately to your boyfriend. 😊
We live in a house that was built in 1897, one of the 1st homes in our small town. We have a staircase in the wall that leads to what was once the servants quarters. The original doors with door bells, a clock in the wall, transom windows original wood floors, door frames & many more features. It is such a beautiful home & the history here some of which we will never know.
You forgot the ironing board in the wall; a fabulous idea that I find shocking they took it away.......
My house has one of those and it's only 20-30 years old.
You can still buy them.
I grew up in a home that had most of these Features "A Georgian beauty" with 14 rooms , dumb waiters, front dutch door, ball and claw tubs, butlers pantry , grand fireplaces , mahogany wood beams , maids quarters , ball room complete with a player piano, crystal chandlers, slot doors into the dining room, a grand sweeping staircase and it was also haunted as hell.!!!..........its been 50+ yrs but, I still on occasion walk through my now demolished childhood home in dreams 😓 I still miss it so.........
My inlaws live in a home from the 1700's and it has all that except they had to have bathrooms installed because the house had none, it only had an outhouse.
Their home has been in many magazines and is stunning. Nothing like an old home. It's so sad when they tear them down. They don't make them like they used to, that's for sure!
That’s must have been a wonderful house for hide and seek!
People in dry regions still use swamp coolers. Deep tubs are back in style and so are pantries.
Nice video.
@@nancyrea3863 Yes, we have a swamp cooler and A/C. We use the swamp when it's hot but not too hot, then switch to A/C. It's great!
Laundry chute: "Imagine the convenience of ... letting your laundry disappear... only to reappear clean and folded in the laundry room." Excuse me! It wasn't the magical laundry chute that washed and folded your clothes, it was your mom!
LOL
Or the maid😊
It was my sister’s. My mother was always working at her business. My sisters spoiled me so much. They washed my cloths and folded them and even put them at the foot of my bed on my bed chest. They would have dinner cooked by time mother came home if she came home that night.
I have a boot scraper, and I miss sleeping porches. I was raised in a home with one on the second floor. It was wonderful all summer long and well into the autumn. Even after AC my sister and I used it.
The house I grew up in had a milk door. I love the little details in old houses.
🥰🥰
My house was built at the turn of the century, and when we went to see it, we really didn't plan on buying it. That all changed when I saw the laundry chute, unpainted original woodwork, and hardwood throughout the house. Bonus! We got it for an unbelievable price in 2017 ($43,000).
That's incredible!!! Where I live you can't even rent a room out of someone's house for that price.
That was amazing find
I remember having an Intercom in our house in the ‘70’s. I thought it was soooo cool.
A+ video!
LOVE IT! What awesome home features!
❤️
I would love to design a house and incorporate some of these features 💝
I remember the old coolers, when I was growing up,we called them water coolers, and they smelled wonderful 😊
Appliances were not manufactured during WWII because of the war. I was born in 1943 & have a lot of memories from my very early childhood. I lived in an apartment with my mom, her mom, sister, & 4F brother until my dad & aunt’s husband returned from the army. I remember the ice box in our kitchen - backed up to the outside wall which had a hole large enough to accept the large block of ice.
My then husband & I bought a 2 flat in the late 1970’s that had been built in 1873. The bathrooms contained claw foot tubs. When we pulled the tubs away from the wall so we could paint, my daughters were fascinated to see that the manufacturing date had been cast into the back of the tub - October 1913 - 2 months before grandma had been born!
My childhood home, built in 1964, had a clothes chute mounted into the wall of the main bathroom. It was metal but painted white.
❤️❤️
Someone had that installed specially upon request.
In the '70s, my godparents in Ohio had a clothes chute built into a wall in the corridor near the bedrooms on the main floor. This chute led directly to an open hamper in the basement laundry room.
Older homes also had transom windows over interior doors to aid in air circulation. My Grama's house has such windows.
Such a great educational video
I loved laundry shoots that we had in our previous house
I read elsewhere that they could act as chimneys if there was a fire, causing a fire to spread faster.
I did have to 'hmmm' at the tile surrounding the chute in the floor, as it's what I have in my bathroom, just a different color.
Claw foot tub tucked in a corner: I guess to clean behind it is THE pleasure of the day!
What about summer kitchens? a room on the back of the house with lots of windows to bring breezes in summer, where you had a stove and sink for summertime cooking. There was a broom/mop/rake closet and a half-bath so you could clean up before coming into the house.
We also had a hidden side garden, between the house and the garage, where the clothes lines were. You could hang clothes out here without them being seen from the street.
It helped that this side garden had climbing roses, lilacs and honeysuckle, so your clothes and linens smelled AMAZING.
My house, built in1964, has a clothes chute. It's one of the reasons we purchased the house. I'd love to have a home with a butler's pantry, too.
I loved those! Now they put laundry rooms on the second floor so they aren’t needed.
We had bells that rang in the kitchen.
And a butler's pantry. Loved it!
My home has many of these items. We replaced the remaining knob and tube wiring before we moved in and we have covered the plaster walls with thin sheet rock since they were cracked. We still have the coal chute in the basement ( the furnace was converted to gas before we bought the house)and a laundry chute in the original bathroom…love it! Another thing I love are the picture rails, so easy to hang art!
I will never forget the sublime beauty of a gaslight on a blanket of snow. How I miss things like that….🐝🤗❤️
My '63 house has a outdoor gas post light, it was turned off (somewhere) during the Carter energy crisis, so I don't know where it should have been reconnected to make it work. A couple years ago when the gas meter was replaced they asked if I wanted to keep the connection to it, and I said No, so it's not coming back now anyway.
@ awww, that’s a shame. They are so beautiful.🙁❤️🐝
I remember many of these. But you failed to mention Murphy beds. I lived in a couple homes and several apartment that had them. At night it was a bedroom, but during the day it could be a sewing room(hobby room), a parlor, a play room, even a living room... essentially anything you could think of that you needed. And the bed was hidden in the wall behind a set of door to transform back into a bedroom at night.
My sister just added a Murphy bed to her new home. It's her guest bed and her craft room when she has no guests.
@RoverClover yes they are very good. Best I can recall i stayed in half a dozen homes the had them built into the wall. Most of Hehe had several in each place. One was usually in the front room(living room) and the others in a bedroom. From the age of the houses I know that the wives back then would run a businesses from them, dress making, quilting, hair dressing were popular choice by historical reports. All these buildings were pre ww2. I suppose the construction boom after the war helped to eliminate them.
Bring them back and the doors
Honestly, laundry chutes are still a good idea for multi-level homes provided there are proper child safety measures in place.
My grandparents lived in a small mansion with a ballroom and servant quarters on the third floor. In the basement, there was a Ben Franklin stove for the maintenance man to keep warm by shoveling coal into the boiler. There were also servant stairs that we weren't allowed to use and a beautiful built-in cabinet in the formal dining room. All the woodwork was beautiful, and both the living room and dining room had heavy pocket doors. The house still stands, but the beautiful stained glass windows in the dining room are gone when I stop to see the house. I knocked, but there was no answer, so I wondered if they kept many of its features. The home was built for an heiress in the early 20th century, and my mom took dance lessons there, heard that it was going on sale, and went home two doors down the street. She told her dad, and he bought it back in the 30s.
My family has a cabin that was built over a hundred years ago that had an ice box built into the kitchen cupboards. It still had the old ice pick in it. Though it's just an empty cupboard now i enjoy that is there. Also the wooden counters have grooves carved into them that get deeper as they get closer to the sink to divert water to the sink. This seems very practical but I've never seen such a feature anywhere else.
I grew up in a house that had a sleep porch, a coal shoot/room, phone nook, a laundry shoot and a milk door. Dad turned the coal room into a workshop, as we had a gas furnace.
I’ve never heard of milk doors. That’s great! I live in a 1930s Tudor. Lots of charm.
🥰
I'm watching this and reflecting on how many childhood memories it evokes. I spent most of my early years with my grandparents, who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s in older homes. Even when they built their own houses, they incorporated many elements from their past and included family furniture/ items. I'm grateful the algorithm brought me here.
There was two on this list that I have in my home circa 1950’s: a blade slot in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom and a telephone niche in my hallway. There were also two I had never heard of: witches windows and California coolers.
My parents home had a blade slot. When the medicine cabinet was pulled out another room was discover, ITY razor blades lying on the floor.
I miss the second floor laundry chute. A broom closet at the back door. We had a milk chute. If we got locked out - mom would feed one of us through the milk chute and we would open the door.
Phone nooks! So cool!
We called ours a milk chute. It later had to be bolted shut after our Detroit home was broken into through it. I built a clothes chute in my current home. Put your clothes into a cabinet in our master bathroom and it drops into another cabinet in the laundry room. I also built transom windows in a couple rooms.
OMG I feel 8000 years old because I know what these things are , either because I am smart or because I am not the sort to sit around just not wondering what something is, but figuring it out.
Both good qualities.
Me toooooi!!!!!!!😮
Yes, we had a clothes shoot. We need them back!!
I was born in 1962, and though I watch old movies, and take in every new thing that I've never seen before, even noticing furniture stylings and architectural things of all times, I have never come across a milk door. I know about coal chutes and dumbwaiters, I even know what a pie safe is, but this is the first I've ever heard of a milk door.
Now I have to go search the internet to see if this is an American thing or not. Maybe it's just a Northeastern, and maybe Northern thing, as a measure of keeping the milk from freezing before the people get up to retrieve it into the house. I'm just thinking because Time Marches On and since building practices became a bit more streamlined, in the market fluctuated and would being cheaper than brick and so on and so forth these things were just simply left out as Americans spread out across the countryside. This would explain why I had never come across one, due to my age. But I cannot figure since my tastes are wide and eclectic why I have never come across the mention of a milk door or seen one in a movie. It is reasonable to assume that because any mention of a Milkman in a movie has some sort of dialogue with the lady of the house, that it would be anticlimactic for there to be a milk door in the side of the house, wish you would have no chance to converse with the milkman -- although, I do think it could be pretty funny to have the lady of the house bending over to talk through a milk door, and the husband coming in to see his wife bent over I'm making a quip.
@@kayceegreer4418 We had a milk chute. I still feel awful about dropping a glass gallon jug of milk and the mess it made. :( Once when the neighbors locked themselves out of the house, I was small enough to wiggle through the milk chute and unlock the door. We also had a laundry chute -- very handy. Now we don't even have a basement.
The house I grew up in, in Burbank CA, had a milk door, razor blade slot, also a match holder in the kitchen, a built in ironing board, and before I was born, had a swamp cooler and an icebox. It was built in 1937.
The house I currently live in, in Maine, has a butler's pantry, lath and plaster walls (the plaster has horse hair in it), and side lights on either side of the front door. There was at one time an old coal burning boiler in the basement but no coal chute. I have a modern heating oil boiler now. It's a Dutch colonial so I'm surprised no Dutch door. It was built in 1929.
Oh, I lived in 2 homes with built in ironing boards. My mom ironed a lot so those were handy. We lived in 1 house with a kitchen match dispenser on the wall, it was pretty.
LOVED my phone nook in my parents home🤗👍👏❤❤❤❤❤
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Grandparents house had phone nook with a triangular chair with three legs. And there was still an icebox on the back porch. And my neighbor had a laundry chute and my friend showed me and I kept sliding down and come back upstairs and slide down again.
And another friend had central vacuum in their house so you just had a long hose with attachment to carry from room to room to vac the floor. There was the dust bin mounted in the garage that got emptied every couple weeks.
I knew everything except the California cooler. We had milk delivered (Elsie the Bordon Cow) and a Hostess truck with cupcakes and Twinkies back when they were good. (Gotta love that lard!)
I grew up in 1970's Arizona. We definitely had "coolers" on our roof. However, I have never heard the term "California Cooler." I have heard "swamp cooler" in the lower midwest and south. Whatever you call them, the visuals shown did not include one. Lol 😂
My grandfather updated their porch into a screened in porch in the 90s. Of course my grandparents grew up in the Great Depression and he built his own house when he retired from the marine corps (WW2-Vietnam) on his own cattle ranch. We loved sleeping out there and cuddled around the fireplace and cast iron stove during the winter. We also had friends who had laundry shoots, a central all house vacuuming system, and intercom system throughout the entire house (80s-90s). I also had an old Victorian home that use to be oil heated but had a huge attic fan used to circulate the air all year round. It had to be cleaned when I got it from all the burned oil residue on it. Loved having a turret tower and foyer. Still see boot scrapers used especially in the rural areas of my state. Use to see transom windows all over the place when I was growing up in the 80s especially in government buildings and offices. We had them in our barracks in Germany (00-20s) and was in my apartments when I lived in Europe because they’re still used (also main windows either tilt or open like a door and have a steel roll down shutter). Also had picture rails where I forgot and left several items hanging from them. We used swamp coolers in Iraq and have seen them for sale with a tag line that some engineer figured out how to cool a house for pennies with some new technology but is just a small swamp cooler.
I have experience with almost all of these features, having lived in and loved Victorian houses all my life.
My grandparents house had a laundry chute.
Us kids upstairs would use it to eavesdrop on the adults talking downstairs. :)
Lived in housed with most of these. Including the wire and knob electric. Also Pre asbestos and fiberglass plaster had horse hair in it for reinforcing. A lot of plaster from the 50s to 70s has asbestos so be careful. My dads house still had the old gaslights on the wall but they were disconnected. I feel old.
Fascinating-hadn’t heard of plaster with horsehair! I do have bedroom furniture over 100 years old, with a small chair and a vanity stool that have their seats filled with horsehair!
Sleeping porches = Sun porches for us.
I was born in 1946 and we lived about 4 blocks South from the Main Street and our Drug store was on a corner of the Main Street and the cross street called 8th Street. We would walk down there for the first 4 years of my life and that had a counter with revolving stools where you get ice cream treats and soft drinks in the curved glasses serve in metal cradles with a finger holes. In the ceiling there were multiple ceiling fans with lights. It was styled on the outside with English Tudor cross beams and off white stucco. I thought the drugstore was so amazing, it was the most attractive business. I remember all of those things existing because my mother told me about everything but by the time I was small Grandma converted from a coal furnace to a natural gas furnace and she kept her icebox and stored things in it rather than throwing it away after she bought a refrigerator. She only had a wringer washer and a clothes line for laundry and a big old gas stove that had the oven up higher on tall legs and it was black and white. Then she bought a boxy style more modern shaped gas stove. The kitchen sink was very long but not very deep. She washed dishes by setting a dishpan in the sink and sit on a stool washing dishes. Her house had a built in China cabinet in the kitchen and it had a swinging door. There was a butler pantry to keep the dining pieces for the dining room and big sliding doors between the parlor and dining room.
My 100 year old craftsman house has remnants of a lot of these. I had to replace the knob and tube when I bought the house, mostly because the DIY Romex added in the 50s was deteriorating and dangerous. Gas lighting fixtures, some that had been converted using said Romex, are still on the walls. Being a one story house, some features weren’t needed, but I could really use a boot scraper coming in from gardening because the mudroom wall was removed making a larger kitchen. One thing not mentioned is a little door at the bottom of the chimney. It’s for removing ashes from the fireplace. Instead of shoveling them into a bucket, you sweep them into a hole down at the back of the fireplace. That hole is accessible from the outside where you can hang your bucket and scoop them in. I mix them into my compost.
Really?
I remember knob and tube
I think we had most of them in our houses. There’s also a reason that the ceilings in old houses are 12-14 feet. Heat rises and it keeps the house cooler in the summer. The Amish still build their houses that way. Old houses also have no closets, only a box called a wardrobe to hang up their clothes. Tax accessors considered closets to be a room and assessed higher taxes.
I was hoping to see a Murphy Bed. I have always been fascinated by them and of course the dumb waiter when I was a child.
Radiators for heat. My sister's house in Maine had them.
I lived in a big old brick house built around 1820. All the records were destroyed in a fire so no exact date. We had servants quarters with a back stairway into the kitchen, push button light switches, pocket doors, the original front door hardware and key, a brass door bell, a winding staircase, original wood floors. But the coolest thing was a wooden bathtub with a tin lining. The plumber said he never saw another one like it in all his years of plumbing. I miss that house!
Push-button light switches!, Had those too- I almost forgot- thanks for the memory!
@peterbaruxis2511 half of the switches didn't go to anything but they looked so cool. I forgot we had a dumbwaiter too and a big old attic filled with bats and antique furniture and a spooky basement filled with all kinds of neat old stuff - glass, pottery etc etc etc.
Thank you. I enjoyed many of these treasures. We also had a door opener in our home. If you were upstairs you just pulled a lever to open the front door below. The front door had a window so you could see who you wanted to let in.
WOW..THAT IS AMAZING..NEVER HEARD OF THAT FEATURE..
I lived in an older home for 9.5 years with my husband and children. It had a boot scraper and a laundry chute. As our winters were rainy, the scraper was very useful. My kids loved the laundry chute. The litlest ones would drop through it onto the pile of laundry in the basement.
My home still has some knob and tube wiring, unused of course. My understanding is that it was no longer used after 1910. Looks cool, it's in my kitchen. The furnace in my basement looks like it's from 1910. Lol. Thanks for the video...be well, friend. ✌️
I loved our laundry chute.
I lived in a late 1800s home. I miss the clawfoot tub, shutters that provided shade and privacy on the windows, and the pocket doors ❤
x 0:48 There was one of those crank phones on the tv series Lassie!
o In Lincoln, Nebraska there is a telephone museum (props from the museum were used on the movie Yes Man).
x 3:11 It would be awesome to have a milkman and a milkdoor for him to leave the milk bottles!
x 4:59 A sleeping porch sounds really comfortable!
x 9:46 Those parlor rooms are super fascinating!
x 12:45 There was a Dutch Door in the movie Funny Farm!
x 14:48 Witchcraft windows!
o First time I have heard of those, they are probably popular in Salem, Massachusetts!
x 18:14 I am totally sold on laundry chutes!
❤️
A sleeping porch would be cool to have if you come home drunk and don't want to come in and wake up people. Or if it's summer and you want to sleep outside.
@@canaisyoung3601 It would be great in the summer!
Everyone in my neighborhood still has a sleeping porch, although many go unused or are storage areas I use mine quite frequently for a work area in the summer.
We used to live on the first floor of an old apartment building. There was a milk door in the hallway that was still usable inside, but was covered over outside. In the bathroom was a covered-over laundry chute that was no longer usable, and a clawfoot tub that we did use right up until we moved.
Don't confuse the coal door with the milk door 😅
My inlaws live in a historical home built in the 1700's. In the living room there was the small door, but it wasn't a coal chute, it was a door to slide the coffins into the house for viewing. The viewings used to be done right in the home, not a funeral home. They also had to have bathrooms put in because there were only outhouses back then. Their home is absolutely stunning. They put so much work into it. It was in House Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens and a few other home magazines. At Christmas, they would have tours through their home.
My husband and I married there over 30 years ago. It was a beautiful wedding!
I miss the way houses used to be built. They were built well and had character, nowadays, everyone has cookie cutter houses, like mine. Older homes are beautiful imo. I knew about all these things and even had a razor blade slot in my bathroom!
The funniest thing that this video made me realize is that I'm old!!
I miss the old days, especially celebrating Christmas in the parlor and all our relatives!!
I just wish could go back and do it all over again! It brings mist to my eyes when I think about how those days are long gone. As I age, I find myself being very nostalgic and longing for those day when life was so much more simple. 😢
WOW on the coffin door. I've seen antique tables called Coffin Tables, I guess they would have been a good height to display the coffins in the home. I didn't know about the razor blade wall storage until I saw this video. I bet your wedding was really special!
I thought the same thing craig. Some friends still have these features in their home today. One has several. A friend lives in the main farm house of a whole area that today is a whole neighborhood their family sold the property to.
Lived in a few houses as a kid that had a phone nock, my grandparents had the old style electrical wiring (eventually it got changed), 1st house I ever bought had the lathe & plaster walls (it was built in 1907). Oh the swamp coolers, my grandma used these my whole childhood as did my mom. Laundry shutes my children all find these fascinating. Also loved in many houses with not scraper, might need to hunt one down for my current house to add a detail of charm. Never seen a witches window- May need to incorporate one into my house.
My old ‘stalinka’ apartment in Kherson had a 2 meter thick wall. My dad and grandpa spent over a week chiseling out a nook for the phone and mirror. I hope that house is still there…
I live in a house built in 1885, I've got these in the list:
Coal Doors
Knob and Tube Wiring
Parlour Room
Clawfoot Tub
Gaslight Fixtures
I have a few hatches that I don't know what they are... they look like the Coal Doors, but on the inside away from where the coal is stored.
I did some re-wiring at my uncle's house & garages, (I like collecting old things) and I saved old ceramic wire nuts made in Holland!
Great Vids! Just to point out that the kind of Parlors that you describe were only for show to guests, and had all the finest furniture, art and décor. But they were not the room where the family lived. The 'family parlor' was a much more simple , smaller room, with more utilitarian furniture that served as the living space for the family. All the fancy stuff in the so called 'front' 'guest' parlor was too valuable to expose to daily wear and tear from the family. Of course if the family could afford a piano or pipe organ, that would be in the fancy 'front' parlor and be used by the family even when there were no guests. About bathrooms and servants: when indoor plumbing was made available to the middle class you would see two bathrooms becoming the standard for the middle class homes. But these two bathrooms were not both for the family, The bathroom on the family bedroom floor was for the family, but the second bathroom, usually part of the servants quarters or in the basement of the house was only for the servants. Class segregating even in bathroom usage was considered the norm.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you for sharing those details!
I do hope you have enough information to keep this channel open for a while this is interesting
What else would you like to see? Then I can transfer a video there
The "front parlor" was often elaborately decorated and used only when there was an important visitor. The children were NOT allowed in except on special occasions, so it was not the center of family activity. The kitchen in large Victorian homes was often in the basement, and a dumbwaiter was used to transport food and dishes upstairs to the dining room. Claw foot tubs are valued by some pretentious decorators today, but they are a nuisance to clean under and behind, and a hot tub of water cools rapidly.
I STILL have knob and tube wiring in my house! Lol, I pray on the regular that it doesn't start a fire before I can afford to switch it all out
In 1969 we lived in a suburban area just outside of Baltimore City. The area was getting a little rough, so Ma and Daddy went to a realtor, and before my sister and I knew it we were packing for a grand adventure called "moving". Daddy moved us to a big beautiful house out in the country. Instead of rowhouses as far as the eye could see, our new neighborhood had only ten individual houses, and ours was the only one with a Dutch door. On rare occasions when Ma wasn't looking I would drape myself over the bottom half and swing back and forth. Our own separate house, being country girls now, and a Dutch door! It was almost more excitement than a seven year old could take.
Our home had the coal shuttle and door outside
We had a butlers pantry and a large glassed in
Porch, beautiful wooden floors.
Oh and the laundry door to the basement. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
In the mid fifties my folks bought a 1929 house near Pittsburgh PA. The house had 13 rooms, 6 bathrooms, and 3 floors, not counting the basement. The third floor was the servants quarters, though we had no servants. They had two large bedrooms, a full bath and a kitchen. The house had a laundry chute, a coal bun for the original coal fired boiler. Electricity service was unreliable n 1929 so the house had both electric lights but also gas lights in most rooms. There was a butler’s pantry. We were very middle class,with no servants, but it was fun to live in the kind of house that had it not been in a somewhat remote area would have been impossible for us to afford.
Laundry shoots are still used today. I have one at one location Ive worked at for my job.
I grew up in the 70s, and our first house had a Laundry Shute which was fun to play with as a mischievous boy. My mom would be in the basement and I'd lower a big rubber spider down the Laundry shute and scare her. 🤣🤣🤣 My grandparents had a house with Pocket Doors, Dutch Doors, and a Mike Door. Very cool features.😊
Not one of those pictures/videos was a swamp cooler by the way. Those were wine coolers. A swamp cooler was a big machine outside of the house that used running water to cool the house. My grandma had one. Those were not it…
Exactly. Its a bummer to see inaccurate history.
I would love to have a home with all of these features in proper working order. My mother always told me i was born in the wrong century.😁
My grandmother who died many years ago(I'm 61) and she always called her refrigerator an ice box
..I called them the same way into my 30S😂❤
Another purpose of picture rails was to prevent damage to the plaster. Driving a nail into plaster might cause a big scab of plaster to fall off, or you might drive the nail into a gap between the wooden laths behind the plaster, and have to try again.
Wow, - what an excellent video! Thank you so much for sharing!
My grandparents’ home had most of those features: maid’s personal stairway and room above the kitchen, maid’s pantry between the kitchen and the dining room, cast iron stove with wood box behind it, icebox outside,next to the kitchen door, ornamental copper ceiling in the kitchen, plastered walls, etc.
currently renting an older house that has a laundry shute in the bathroom. Makes it so easy to send used towels to the basement for laundry.
My childhood home had an attic fan. Before AC, the fan would draw cooler air in through the windows into the attic where it would escape through vents in the eaves. I spent many an hour napping on a quilt under that fan!