Ideas of the past were so cool. I live in a 1901 house, and we have hitching rings embedded in the sidewalks. The city I live in has made them historical so even if the sidewalk gets rebuilt over time, they are reinstalled. I always thought that a nice way to remember history.
My PA German hometown had hitching rings embedded in the cement walls behind the hardware store where the Amish folk would come to buy seed, gardening equipment, etc. They would hitch up their horse and buggies and enter the store at the rear of the building. Later a wooden hitching post was built so the buggies would not be hit by cars....it was off the street so the buggies and animals were safe. I am sure it is still well used today because the Amish are still living in the surrounding countryside.
Still have the wooden laundry chute door in my house bathroom that was built in the early 1920s. When we used to use it, we'd keep a basket in the basement to catch the laundry we'd throw down the chute. Seems like a good thing to keep around when raising a family.
in some rural areas, burning trash outside was still done. the ashes were used as a soil amendment in their vegetable garden. pollution was negligible. in many countries burning trash is still the preferred method of disposal.
Until I read this I forgot our house from the 50s had an incinerator when I was very young, behind the huge furnace. Dad had it removed because he feared we kids would get hurt.
We built our retirement home five years ago in the country. We include double hung windows which have a similar function to the transom windows, a root cellar, a 1950’s window fan that pulls the night air through the house and a wood burning stove for winter heat that is disbursed through out the house by a 1940’s oscillating fan. A small amount of work with a big financial savings.
@Sean Embry Am 53. Never in my life have I, or anyone I knew, had to brush the dead bugs off of their radiator to keep their car from overheating. No doubt this has happened during infrequent large spawns but never as a matter of course. Not saying we don't have problems, but your moronic "proof" is proof of nothing.
I miss double-hung windows. The house I grew up in had them. We would lower the tops one one side of the house and raise the bottoms on the other side to get a nice convection going.
"Dumbwaiter" refers to the older definition of "dumb" meaning "silent", not "stupid", as they silently delivered items to other areas of the home. Speaking tubes were still being used in new multi-story buildings into the 1940s.
My elementary school had windows above all the doors that went into the classroom. They also had those old radiator heat that made a tink tink sound and would be really hot if you touched them.
When we were kids growing up, I loved putting my feet on the radiators in the winter in the house I grew up in, and yep, they could be noisy especially when they heated up.
We had a whole house fan in my childhood home. We also had air conditioning. The nice thing about the big fan you could turn it on at night and open your windows. The house cooled down so quick. My uncle still has these fans in his house and garage.
They work better than air conditioners. The huge amount of air they can move as opposed to an FAU is no comparison, with the insulated walls of houses, the temperature outside can be 10-20° lower than the inside. They can cool an entire house in under ten minutes, when the FAU takes 30 minutes, at many times the energy cost. No compressor, just a big fan. בס'ד
We had one of those too when I was little, I loved it. Like others have said it would cool the house down in minutes and the breeze was awesome for sleeping!
I worked in the elevator trade for a number of years and once in a while ran across these dumbwaiters in older large homes...which was very cool. They usually were powered by pulling on a rope to go up or down. I did get the chance to see a larger rope hand operated elevator at an old morgue. Cool stuff!
I visited an old farmhouse that was up for sale which contained many of these features.There was a root cellar with many bins, a dumb waiter, and fireplaces all over. There was a summer kitchen so the heat would not make the house hotter in the warm months. There was a lightning rod or two, and a communication tube between the house and the barn. All the paint and wallpaper was still in place and most in good repair. The attic had some kind of setup that allowed one to pull the frame of the house back into "square" so the home remained upright and not askew...hard to explain, but genius. My favorite thing was the very large ballroom with parquet floors in excellent condition and candlelit chandeliers and numerous mirrors to accentuate the twirling, happy dancers. What a lot of thought went into this home and the lofted barns, paddocks, and fields. I wish I had been up to the stairs and housekeeping of that beautiful but very large house! One would have needed a large family to do all the work!
Fascinating story. Did you take any pictures? I would love to see some of those things....especially a contraption that dealt with the frame of the house. Thank you for sharing.
My church had a dumbwaiter and it was used during church dinners. Later, a fellowship hall was built on the kitchen level. I don't know if they did away with the dumbwaiter. It is probably still there unless that part of the church has been renovated.
The house that my wife and I purchased 40 years ago was built in 1873 and has many of these features. In addition, it also has pocket doors. We still open all of the transom windows and run the attic fan (which was a later addition) on many spring and fall days when air conditioning would be overkill. The farmer that originally built the house must've been pretty well off.
I remember the whole-house-fan that my grandmother's house, which had a flat roof, had in the cockloft; it was an event when that thing came on. They still sell them, but I'd want one with an automatic shutoff triggered by the smoke detectors; that updraft would spread a fire through the house in minutes.
Central vac is not part of the past but because of cost most people can not afford to have one put in a new home. My parents house built in 92 has one. It’s so much better then a vacuum.
@@genxx2724 Inflation, and people mistakenly thinking that a weak battery or automatic vacuum that only gets what's on the surface, is all that any vacuum can get. People today haven't been taught about the deep down dirt...the sand that goes to the bottom of the pile and cuts the carpet fibers loose. They think vacuuming is all about the surface stuff they can see. Their grandmothers and great-grandmothers should have a talk with them.
A central vac takes all, the really fine dust that gets into your lungs out of the house. And, they are almost silent. The noise is in the basement or garage.
I lived in St. Louis after my first job after college in 1980. Bought a 1952 brick rancher in StL with a ceiling vent fan in hallway into the attic. Wow did that thing suck the cooler air in at night during the Summer. Still worked perfectly when I sold the house in 2004. Passed city inspection too. :)
Jim, I was fortunate enough to move next door to an older guy and his wife after I bought that house after college in 1980 in StL. He showed me how to oil the motor every year and clean the blades. What a super guy. WW2 vet. Taught me a lot about taking care of a house which I treasure. Tks for your comment. :)
Oh in the early '70s the house I lived in had the attic fan which made me uncomfortable as it was in the hallway close to my bedroom. Was glad not to see it again when we moved out (I wasn't 8 yet lol). One more thing: the laundry chute. My aunt and uncle had one in their big old house which was a big help as they had 3 kids, all pre-teens then.
I'm electrician and I do a lot of work in Westfield, New Jersey. I thoroughly enjoy working in old homes and its really become the niche of my business. I replace knob & tube wiring, old devices like switches & receptacles, and install new lighting. It's fascinating to me how the old timers used to wire homes. I have definitely seen my share of "root cellars" but I never knew what that was until seeing this video. This was a fascinating video doc.
I'm a sparky as well, but I primarily wire custom home, many are multi million dollars, in various parts of South Carolina but usually near the Greenville area. Although I have worked in older home and seen those cute push button switches and some knob and tube, which was disconnected but left in place, probably for looks as they had newer romex running along side it, to the newer breaker panel. In fact when I lived in Pontiac Michigan several years ago, I may have save the lives of my elderly neighbors. I get home from the grocery store on a cold November night when I go banging on their front door telling them to get out there is smoke and some flames coming from the attic vent. Sadly their home was a total loss and melted the vinyl siding of the house I was renting. The investigation showed the fire started in the attic, at a splice between the knob and tube system, and some romex wiring. The neighbors just purchased the home earlier that same year and said it passed a home inspection, the electrical system appeared to be up to date. The home was a two story balloon framed built in the late 1920s, about 80 years old at the time of the fire. The walls acted as a chimney for the fire and it was intense by the time the fire department arrived . Be careful and only make splices in approved enclosures. That way if something fails it should be safely contained, and in my experience, except for rare occasions like someone hanging a picture and driving a nail through the wire, all problems happened at splices and terminations.
My modern built house has a central vacuum system. Its brilliant, convenient and so powerful it could suck your slippers off your feet! I don;t understand why more homes don't have one and how I ever lived without it.
My house was built in 1936 and it has two laundry chutes. One upstairs and one in the kitchen. I LOVE and use them all the time. This house has a door knocker too. I thought it was black and tried to clean it before painting it,but as I cleaned it, it turned out to be solid brass. I bought brasso and polished it up. Beautiful now. Crystal doorknobs on every door with brass ornate plate surrounding them.
Back in the 70s, my uncle owned an 1890s Victorian. He was the second owner and there was still a carriage house around back. There were speaking tubes in the walls, but these were probably retrofitted gas lines from the old lighting fixtures -they had a porcelain mouthpiece with a metal flap one lifted to use. Victorian coffin niches were generally used on staircases that were narrow and/or had tight turns. It was expected a person would pass away upstairs, so families sometimes kept a reusable casket in the attic and funerals were held at the home in the parlor.
@@keouine Judging from the size of some period furniture, I'm sure those niches came in handy. Locally, there are about two Victorians that are rather intact and fully furnished with original/period decor/furnishings -though upstairs areas are off limits due to handicap laws.
I strongly suspect the coffin niche term is a myth. From the staircases shown, and the narrowest ones I've seen, a coffin can be taken down by lowering the foot end and raising the head. I'm a paramedic and have sometimes had to take someone downstairs on what we call a scoop stretcher. We did it just like that, no niche required, on some very narrow tight staircases. The other solution for the coffin problem is - carry the person down first, *then* put them in the coffin!
@@tophorn7348 These were just used to display the body when the funeral/viewing was held at the home. Usually a slightly ornate toe-pincher. After the service, the deceased were placed in another for actual burial. The display coffin would then be placed back into storage for the next family member. In some cases, the coffin may even be a wicker design. Common practice back in the day?? Not too much... I've had a few vintage caskets/coffins over the years, and a few hearses....😎
My parents bought their house in the 1977, it was remodeled by the previous owners but they kept the ironing board cabinet and another cabinet in the kitchen next to the stove that has shelves in it which I'm assuming was for storing spices although my mother didn't use it for that, she used it as a medicine cabinet. Also, their neighbor right next door had already been living there years before my parents moved in next door and she NEVER did any kind of remodeling or upgrading to her house, her house was exactly the same since the day she and her late husband bought it when they married right after High School up until she passed away two years ago at almost 100 yrs old, and her house also had the ironing board cabinet, the cabinet with shelves in the kitchen next to the stove, all original old doors with old doorknobs that still lock and unlock with a skeleton key, old light fixtures, and original old windows, the same furniture that she bought when her and her late husband moved in, it was like going back in time, it was the only house in the area that was still exactly the same since they built it, it was like time stood still, but what I liked the most about her house is that the kitchen still has a little door that opens from the outside and it's where MANY years ago the milkman would drop off the glass milk jugs.
Our milk came in a five gallon can! I remember you had to let it sit and then gently scoop off the top 4 or 5 inches that was cream ! They made butter and other stuff out of it! Always delicious!
@@sunderwood9321 yeah I remember the milkman but do you remember the soda man and the beer man? That’s when all beverages were sold in returnable bottles and all you actually paid for was the liquids unless you broke a bottle then you had to pay for it
I was born in 1932 and was fortunate enough to grow up in Southeast Portland in an area originally known as Mt. Tabor. My home was built in 1888 by my great grandfather who dug the basement by hand with a shovel. There was a dumbwaiter, which was called a "woodlift" to bring coal up from the basement for use in the pot-bellied stove in the living room, or to carry home-canned foods down to a small spider-infested storage room in the basement. No fans, no laundry chutes, but it was a wonder- ful, creaky old house. There was a cistern outside the back door to collect rainwater for my great grandparents to use. And of course there was a horse ring in the curb in front of the house. Many, many lovely memories!
@@virginiagrabow4528 That is a wonderful story. I enjoyed it very much. Have you ever thought about writing a story or two for the Good Old Days Magazine? Or there's also another one called Reminisce.
We almost still need them for the trucks and suv's everyone think they now absolutely need. Though many have then lowered and turned into station wagon's but aren't called that because it isn't fashionable. They are "crossovers"
Laundry chutes! I grew up in a 3-story home and I loved throwing my laundry in the chute. It fell down to the basement and it was MAGICALLY cleaned, folded, and put back into my drawers. 😀
Laundry chutes and dumb waiters were so nice in an old farm house we lived in. So practical. Now our condo has 28 total stairs to the laundry in the basement. I miss root callers and built in ironing boards. Ah, so many practical and beautiful accessories. Thanks
I lived in an apartment building (still standing) that had built in ironing boards in every apartment. Some of them still had functional ironing boards. Others had the boards removed and shelving installed in their place, creating a small pantry.
After living in small condos for years, I eventually bought a wall mounted ironing board that closed up to a cabinet door. That was nearly 15 years ago, so I believe that they can still be purchased to install. It is too bad that they’re not built into all small apartments.
I grew up in a house with the Butler’s pantry, a laundry chute, and the central vacuum system. Didn’t have any transom windows, but we did have sleeping porches.
I work in a library that used to be a manor home for the town mayor. The building dates back to the 1800s, and there is a transom window above the front door. I never knew what its proper name was, nor what its true function was. You taught me something tonight!
In my modern home we recreated the transom effect. Cut a hole above the door and put an AC vent over that to mask it. That helped tremendously to equalize the temp in all rooms.
0:42 We used to live in a home in California that had a laundry chute. If I'm not mistaken, the house was built back in 1932, and it was found in my bedroom. I wish they were in more homes today.
We had one, too, in this old house in OH. There must have been some rough edges inside of it because things would keep getting stuck in them, making it necessary to dump heavy items in to free the stuck laundry.
We had one put in; our upstairs hallway was a stair landing, directly over the entrance to the garage. With the chute installed in the hallway, the laundry dropped directly into the garage. We used to keep a big cardboard box below the chute to collect the clothes that dropped from the garage's ceiling. It looked exactly like the ones in the video. The contractor used a rope with a small 8 oz. plastic bottle tied to the end, after filling it with sand, to pull the hatch closed. All the bedrooms in the house opened up into that stair landing. That old bottle is still in there, since the '70s.
My brother and his wife built a new home in early 2000's with a central vacuum system. The house I grew up in was built in 1965. In the bathrooms it had a laundry cabinet at floor level big enough for a laundry basket to sit inside and a fold out laundry shoot just above it. Fold open the shoot and throw the dirty clothes into the basket below. A really nice feature.
The previous owners of our '70 house build in cabinets below the laundry chute in the basement. They had a basket sitting on top of one side of the cabinets. We extended the chute and now the laundry goes directly into the cabinet, no basket in side but we can access the cabinet from its side also that is in the laundry area.
Regarding the carriage blocks, every time I watch the 1947 film _Life With Father_ with William Powell and Itene Dunne, there is a scene that shows a carriage block, only I never knew what that rectangular piece of stone was. All it had was the owner's name carved into it -- "Clarence Day". I wondered why it was there as, it looked like a good way for people to trip over it, right there at the curb. Finally, the question has been answered. A carriage stepping stone and a means to mount a horse! Makes sense now. Thank you!
I loved that show! I also had no idea what it was, and forgot about that block. They had an enormous apartment in New York, and because he was a wall street tycoon, it was very luxurious. There were those beautiful pocket doors separating the parlour where a very young Liz Taylor told her suitor she was a Methodist. My sister has pocket doors in her house, but they're just single doors, not the wall sized doors in the Day's apartment.
Our coal cellar, no longer in use, had a chute, with a small cast-iron door that opened to the outdoors at ground level. Coal supplier would fit truck chute to basement chute to deliver coal.
@@vincegay986 When I was a kid we had the heavy cast-iron door, about 2 feet square for coal delivery. It would dump into the basement onto the floor into an enclosure that looked like a horse stall. I remember Dad shoveling coal into the furnace about 4 times per day during winter.
Oh, yeah the coal cellar! I remember as a really small child a load of coal being delivered. The chute from the truck would run through an open cellar window. I think the coal cellar was open to the rest of the cellar and must have sent a lot of coal dust throughout the cellar. This fascinated me as a little kid, probably a pre-K kid. You brought back a memory for me.
@@virginiasoskin9082 Yes, coal dust was an issue. I think our cellar only had one pull-chain light fixture by the coal bin....it was a spooky place. lol
Colonial to Victorian ice houses were behind most mansions... maybe 15 x 20 feet, one story, the walls two feet thick filled with sawdust... in midwinter, locals would saw blocks of ice from lakes to put in these houses... lakes were rented out for this purpose to ice companies... wooden sailing ships actually carried ice from New England to India in the 19th century!!! My genetic local knowledge from Cape Cod Massachusetts !!! A wonderful place to grow un in the 1950's :)>
We had an icehouse in the backyard. Smaller than the one you describe, but with the double walls filled with sawdust. The floor was about two feet below ground level for extra coolness from the earth, and it was a dirt floor. We used it as a tool shed. This was a nice home, but not a mansion at all, just another house on the block - but the only one with an icehouse.
I AM FROM LOUISIANA,WE DIDN'T HAVE A C TILL 65 .BEING RAISED IN SLIDELL IN THE 50S AND 60S. HEAT WAS NOT A PROBLEM.IT GET YOU READY FOR THE AFTERLIFE. GOD BLESS
We lived in a small, no-frills, old farmhouse in CT back in the 50s. No air conditioning, and the place certainly didn't have any of those ceiling fans. We spent a couple unspeakable summers trying to get to sleep on hot nights until Dad brought home a large box fan, mounted it in the window facing outward, and sucked the hot air out of the house that way. The cooler air that came later in the night also made it comfortable after the hot air was gone.
I have a door knocker on my door and NO ONE EVER USES IT! Drives me CRAZY! It's right there, USE IT. It sounds louder than the typical mousy baby taps that people do for knocks, which I can never hear.
My house was built in the '70s, I think. I have an attic fan that works great. It's a little on the noisy side but it sure can pull that cool night air in
@@phoenixobrien163 They are just noisy - the flow of air over the louvers makes them shake - as a kid, we knew when the attic fan was on because you could hardly hear anything else - lol.
I very much enjoyed the video. My grandparents had a root cellar. I loved to go in it during the summer time because it was always so much cooler. I can still remember the distinct smell of dirt.
When I was growing up, my dad would dig a root cellar in the garden. Then come soring would fill it in and plant a huge garden. Then we would cold pack bottle the garden. We grew enough garden to have a years supply of fresh food. Never thought I would miss those days but now that I am older, I really do.
My dad’s parents had a huge clothes shut that was big enough for my sibs, cousins and me to take turns getting into and sliding down to the laundry room and into a big pile of dirty clothes or sheets and towels. On a cold winter’s day or when it was raining outside we little kids would check to make sure that there was a big pile of clothes on the floor in the laundry room and then run upstairs to the bathroom, open up the chute and slide down to the laundry room. We could do that for hours and never get bored. When we got too big for the chute we would go sledding down the steep basement stairs on big pieces of cardboard that my grandpa would get from home furnishings stores. My sibs and I did this at home too. My home is nearly 80 years old and has an ironing board cupboard in the kitchen. The previous owners turned it into a small cupboard with several shelves which are perfect for putting all of our mugs in. It’s interesting to visit our neighbors’ homes to see what they’ve done with their ironing board cupboards.
The modern log home my husband and I have lived in for the past 15 years has a central vacuum system and I absolutely love it! I also have a cordless Dyson vacuum attached to a wall on the main level of the home for quick vacuuming jobs. We recently sold our home and are in the process of moving to a smaller, single level home. We purchased a regular vacuum for our new home and I must say I miss my central vacuum! The electrical cord on the new vacuum is constantly underfoot. I think every home should have a central vacuum system built into it; they’re fantastic!
My Aunt had a central vacuum system in her home in Cape Cod. I remember as a little kid in the 60’s, playing with the outlets with my siblings, when we visited.
Where I grew up in Philadelphia the old homes had roofs over the driveway to keep those getting out of carridges dry. The carridge shed was around back.
One of our first houses in Chicago was a brick bungalow. It had 6 rooms on the first and only level, but had an unfinished basement with a laundry area. It had a closet in the middle of the house next to the washroom. In that closet was a access panel to the bathtub plumbing. Being enough room in the corner, my dad cut out and hinged a door and made a chute to the basement laundry area…..it was a great help. Years later our custom home in a suburb had laundry on the second floor and had a central vacuum. For our later years we bought a ranch home in a subdivision with a basement and a 3 car garage. We added a central A/C system, a whole house fan (in the middle of the home, in a hallway, in the ceiling and controls in the closet adjacent) and a central vacuum. The central vacuum I installed and purchased myself. The builders cost for this was $2600. I bought all the parts for about $700, including the power broom and attachments (this was not supplied by the builder with the central vac system). I had never in stalled such a system but was pretty DIY orientated. About 2 months after moving in (2003) I had a week off before Christmas, with my 9 year old grandson, we installed the system. The system has 3 attachment points on the first floor, 4 in our finished basement and workshop and one in the garage. It’s in the garage by the house door entrance to the laundry/mudroom and the hose and attachments are next to it. This Is my wife’s favorite way to vacuum, because of the light weight and easy way to do this, easier to operate vs. a regular push vacuum. All central vacuums have a built-in canaster that is usually on the bottom of the unit and can have a paper bag or not, ours doesn’t. It’s been operating for 19 years and has never been repaired or replaced. The hardest part of this system is finding someone that sells 10 foot plastic pipe that’s used for these systems. I found a local electrical supply that sold me 16 pipes for $4.04 each, this pipe is not the same as the pvc plumbing pipe, it’s thinner wall. Thanks…Jim
I grew up in a house with a central vacuum. It was awesome, just plug in a go. Biggest drawback was dumping the canister and when it died and no one knew how to fix it.
The vacuum unit was usually mounted in the basement or garage, so the noise was isolated. They were quite powerful and of "shop-vac" power and quality.
During the redevelopment craze of the 1950s in San Francisco, they removed and sold the hitching posts found in front of large Victorians. You can still see them on sidewalks around the city.
My 1838 house had the stepping stone but I needed to add the horse hitch! We also had a laundry shoot on the 2nd story. I’ve added laundry shoot to at least a couple houses I’ve owned. The house I free up in from 1951 had one so it was expected in my houses! I loved my historical home! Miss it terribly!
Back in the 60s my best friend's house had that central vacuum system. The house was small with 2 bedrooms downstairs and a larger one on the third. 2 parents- 7 kids. The 3rd floor was where the 4 sons slept and all their beds were Murphy's. What a house- what a great family!
@@tamedshrew235 Wow! How many baths? My moms oldest brother had 11 kids. The had a three bedroom one bath until they added two more beds & two baths. Big eat in kitchen space. I loved going over there. The four oldest were girls all around my age.
The 1940 bungalow that I grew up in, in the 60's, had an attic fan and a built in ironing board. That attic fan pulled in cool night air and tons of humidity. (Baton Rouge)
In the late 1940s I attended a school in Colorado that had transom windows over the main doors of each classroom to allow air flow. Our farmhouse had a coal room in the basement, and Daddy would call each month for a delivery of coal in a truck that backed up to a certain window that opened for a chute to empty coal into the room that had a locked door so we kids could not get in. My grandmother had a house with a dirt floor basement. Spooky! A relative on a farm in Missouri had a root cellar dug into the side of a small hill that doubled as a safe hideout during tornado season.
That is a wonderful story. I enjoyed it very much. As I have some others here as well. Have you ever thought about writing a story or two for the Good Old Days Magazine? And there's also another one called Reminisce.
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER GOOD IDEA. I will look into it. I have been writing the story of my childhood growing up in the 1940s and 50s to pass on to my sons. Thanks for the tip! Much appreciated.
I remembered my grandparents home had a laundry chute near the bedrooms of their home. Even seeing an attic door in one of the bedrooms looked pretty old in a closet. Even the vents around the house was big square shape for the heat. They even had a fireplace that they didn’t used at all. I think their house was built in the 1930’s. Even this one family had built a home in the late 1980’s had a central vacuum in the house and even a laundry chute for the upstairs 2 bedrooms. To me it was so cool. I grew up in a 1970’s style home with out of those things in it. I liked having wood paneling in one room in the house. That one room was the family room. It was the most comfortable room in the house at that time.
I have a room in my house that was originally used as a laundry "pass-through". The washer and dryer are in the back hall. This room is at the back of the house and laundry would be taken there for folding and ironing. It still has a fold-down ironing board in the wall. There is also a door leading outside which gave easy access to the clothesline.
Here in Northern California outside Sacramento summer temps 90 to 105 but most evenings temps 65-75. Whole house fans are still very popular. Please do a video about the Sizzler when you can.
I live in a 3 story Victorian built for a doctor in 1893. At that time, the town had no running water supplied to the homes. I have a picture of my home taken when it was first built. The picture shows the roof gutters several feet above the edge of the roof line. Rain water was captured and run inside the house and stored in a large water tank in the third floor. This water was used to operate the one flush toilet in the house. I doubt the water was used for drinking as it couldn't be very clean. But at least the good doctor had "indoor plumbing" as most houses of that time still employed "out houses".
We had a floor furnace in a couple of houses we lived in. When I was 8 years old I would jump over the one in the house because I was scared of it. I came to find out when I was 3 I fell on the one in that house and was burned pretty badly on my right leg. They said I has a waffle print burn for months.
When I was a child, we lived in a 2 story old farmhouse...in the center of the upstairs, in the floor, was a metal grate (not stamped, it was cast iron) which was used to passively circulate the warm air from downstairs to the cooler upstairs.
We had a laundry chute in the house I grew up in. Interesting tidbit about the coffin corner, first time I've heard that one. As for door knockers, whenever I see a door knocker I automatically think of Marley's ghost from A Christmas Carol. A bit of undigested beef indeed.
The house I grew up in during the 1950s, was built in 1907 and contained many of the features shown. One item I don't see in large homes are French Windows which opened onto a porch from either the living room or dining room.
Butler’s pantries are hugely popular in higher end houses right now…often with little doors that open into the garage so you can load groceries directly from your car into the pantry without climbing the little flight of stairs from the garage to the house. They also contain all the unsightly small appliances you don’t want cluttering your counters in the kitchen. Sometimes even with a computer nook for looking up recipes and such. My cousin and I love checking out the big new houses during the Parade of Homes. :)
I live in an old building and there is a transom window above my front door but unfortunately the place has been remodeled so many times it has pipes going through it so it's completely non functional! My aunt lived in a really beautiful house in San Jose CA that had a stairway very similar to the one shown. She once saw an article about houses but in it there used to be an indent with an urn so she didn't think it was the same. But then my cousin went up the stairs and she noticed that there was actually one that was plastered over! That stairway also had an incredibly sharp turn at the top I nearly fell down because a few of the first steps were as narrow as a few inches wide! Those eventually became outlawed to build anymore!
My house had a transom window above the back door but they put a wood panel in it. I could have it put back in but they sided the house and it's covered on the outside. I still have 2 old Windows (the others were replaced) they kind that open from the top and have chains to hold them. There was also an outside door into the cellar that they got rid of too. I wish that was still there.
My brother's house also had a transom over the front door but the glass was cracked when he bought the house. He had it taken out and a stained glass window made for it...but it doesn't open it looks beautiful though.
I've been preparing to move from South Florida to West Virginia and many of the things you showed here are in the houses I've been considering to purchase.
We use our root cellar as intended. We have a butler's pantry which we use for china, silverware and serving dishes as well as a breakfast nook. Our old home had a built in ironing board as well as a milk door.
Whole house fans are not obsolete. They are common in California. I've owned three newer homes with them. We just had one installed in a remodel. When the outside temperature is equal or cooler than the inside temperature, we turn off the air conditioning, open the windows and turn on the whole house fan. It runs on a timer and typically turns off in the morning before it gets warm. Then we close the windows. The A.C. doesn't turn on until the early or mid afternoon, saving electricity. They're also good for removing unwanted cooking smells in the house. I wouldn't own a house without one here. I've never seen an old house here with an originally-installed whole house fan. They're rather new things (well, within the last twenty or thirty years, up to the present). Attic fans aren't the same thing as a whole house fan for the nit pickers.
My parent's house up north midwest had the perfect opening to the attic. It is just a piece of plywood that coincidence is the exact size of a box fan. When it cools down in the afternoon, I would put the box fan to High there and you could feel the breeze pulling cool air through the house vs AC.
We had neighbors around the corner from us that had a house built around 1880. They had an elegant two step curbstone made of marble that had the name of the street carved into it. Our little village was a national hub for marble quarrying back in the day, so there's a lot of it in the remaining old buildings.
I live in Phoenix Arizona, I dont know how people back in the days before A/C didn't die of heat stroke especially in their all wool clothes or the time and suits and huge to the floor dresses for the ladies. Must have been terrible
Too much concrete in AZ now. Even in summer, Phoenix AZ cooled off at night in the 1960 so we put on sweaters. The desert used to always be cool to cold at night. In the daytime we had swamp cooling that was perfect!
@@bladerunner752 Phoenix was little then, I think it was the best time to live there. But even on City streets, watch out when the wind blew, because a huge tumbleweed could nail you... it really hurt, lol.
@@aloysiusdevanderabercrombi470 The fabrics available in 1860 were wool, linen, cotton and silk. Silk and wool were the preferred fabrics, but cotton could be used for simple "wash" dresses. Since not all dyes were colorfast in this time period, there are almost no examples of solid colored cottons. Plaids, stripes, dots and other geometric fabric designs were preferred. Silk was used for nice dresses such as for church, visiting and light shopping. It was also used for evening and ball gowns. Silks could be solid, "changeable" (woven with two different colors so it shimmered), as well as the list of prints above for cotton. Wool was available in a wide variety of weights, from light-weight sheer fabric to heavier coat-weight fabric. Wool is fire retardant and it also wicks moisture very well. It was therefore often used for petticoats, outer wear and cooking outfits, as well as for regular dresses.
My friend has a victorian home, with both a horse block and hitching post out front. His mother had them declared historical landmarks so they cannot be removed. The house is amazing, has two staircases one for servants, and maids quarters, that are a separate‘floor’ on the 2nd and 3rd floors. There are secret passageways. It is a very cool house to play hide and seek in.
Back when we could still safely sleep with our windows open, we'd push the beds close to the window in the summer, so the whole house fan in the hallway could draw the cool night air across us. Some summer nights I'd get downright chilled by the breeze.
This is one reason I wish we lived in a two story home so we could leave our windows open at night. But here in FL we usually have either AC or heat on -- one or the other; and with crime being what it can be, you don't feel safe in a one story home leaving windows open at night. when I was a kid in PA in the 1950s, Mom would always leave our windows wide open in summer, and would open them a crack in winter. She believed in fresh air when sleeping and we were never cold at night because she was a quilt maker and could always pile another quilt on top of us. We never woke up groggy in the AM because of that fresh air all night. We used to rearrange our beds in summer to be right under the window, or else sleep with our pillows at the foot of the bed to catch more breeze.
@@virginiasoskin9082 Growing up in the 60's we didn't even lock the house doors. Keys were left in the cars and no one bothered any of them. Today crime is up by 1,000% above the time when I was growing up. A person that spoke their mind back then was admired. Today the "woke" calls for them to be silenced and cancelled! My end is near and I'm sure there's lots of "woke" people that'll be glad when my generation is gone. I'm just glad to have been able to grow up and live during the best times this country has ever seen!
@@justdoingitjim7095 It feels like crime has gone up by 1000%, but it's that you've gotten older and are noting it more. Plus, you have the internet that brings you way more crimes that you would have never heard of 20 years ago when people depended on the newspaper or nightly news for information. Crime has been happening since the beginning of time. It's not new. What is new is how the information is brought to you.
In the 60s/70s I grew up in a house built in the 1800s. There was a cistern in the basement that had been used to collect rainwater before indoor plumbing had been installed. There was also a hand pump in the back yard where there was a still-functioning well.
Funny thing, that "Central Vacuum" ,,,, something I've only "heard" of/about until we've bought this (current)home, built in '99, we 've bought it in '06. It has this, one of the strangest things I've seen!
They are pretty common where I am from (western Canada), my current house (1999) and previous house (1974) both had them. Not every house has its but it’s not really rare here.
There are a number of additional features I've encountered in my homes: French drains (on the roof through the walls to the sewer stack in the basement), telephone niches, built-in telephone benches, milk delivery boxes, milk delivery cabinets with inner and outer doors and ventilation from the cellar to the roof, ice delivery cabinets, ice drain holes in kitchen or back porch floors, utility back porches, coal bins/hods, huge floor grates from the coal heating days, extensible laundry drying racks, built-in drain boards, shallow closets with only hooks, broom closets, sitz baths, water closets, scored plaster, sleeping porches, tacked down linoleum rugs in dining rooms, servant entrances complete with bench, etc. I've also seen every feature you have listed, thanks for putting them together!
Here is a fun tidbit, the currently being produced Fleming 55 yacht has a dumbwaiter from the main deck galley to the flying bridge, so they are still being installed today.
My childhood home was a custom house built in the 1950s. It had a laundry chute. Very civilized. If I were to design my own home, I'd definitely put one in.
Looked more like a spring house than a root cellar to me but maybe not. My grandparents had a summer kitchen attached to the house. Mounting block. Before electric fans, first floor draft could be created by burning gas piped up to a cupula with windows or other openings. It was like the draft produced by a chimney. This was popular in some of the great southern mansions.
I have a book on steam engineering and it describes this, either using a steam jet or a gas flame. The book was written as if electricity didn’t exist, and I suppose it was pretty experimental at the time (late 1800s).
I had an Attic fan installed in my.2 story shirtwaist, built in 1911, in 2004. Best thing I ever did. Really hot nights are few and no sky high electric bills.
We did not have a laundry chute growing up. However we did keep a snow shovel by the back door so I could shovel off the back steps and then shovel a path to the clothes line. And shovel out under the clothes line. That is almost as laundry efficient, right?
Wow there is a house near me where laundry is hung out on the coldest of days. Heavy stuff too. Jeans, hoodies, flannels. We used to shovel a path on the patio out to the grill. Used it all winter
My Mom had a collapsible clothes line she would tote out and put in a cemented in housing in the back yard. You could fit a WHOLE lot of laundry on that line and it smelled so good from fresh air and sunshine. After all was dry, she'd collapse it and bring it inside. She'd only use her dryer in an emergency but she also had wash lines strung in the basement so she could hang up clothes indoors. Nowadays we use the dryer ALWAYS. I don't even think outdoor wash lines are allowed in our subdivision unless they are fenced in so nobody can see them. Rather silly. But here in FL in summer it is so humid I don't think clothes would even dry outdoors. They'd probably just mildew.
@@virginiasoskin9082 When I met my husband I noticed his clothes always smelt so nice. They lived in a big old Victorian & the mom hung lines down in the basement when she couldn’t use the outdoor line.
Owning a big 70s home is the best. You'll find all the cool conveniences of the 70s like large rooms, tall ceilings and vaulted ceilings, sunken living rooms, full wall wood burning fireplaces, double door entrances, large entry halls, steel beam construction, open stairs, central vacuum, built in intercoms with music and built in speakers outside and in every room, built in refrigerators tile countertops with blender station, double ceramic sinks, built in double ovens, down draft stoves with grills, big jetted tubs, separate showers, lighted inground pool with cabana, power rooms off main entrances, finished walk out basements, patios, huge attached garage with lots of storage, wrap around driveway, big walk in closets, real alarm systems covering every window and exit door, real wooden cabinetry, large wet bar, pool table for entertaining. Ahhh guve me a 70s house over anything built before or after.
My husband’s 89 year old uncle worked for a vacuum cleaner company that installed those vacuum systems you mentioned. I forget what year he passed but he did it up until s few years before he died. He couldn’t take crawling around installing the things. It was within the last 20 years. Probably less.
Ideas of the past were so cool. I live in a 1901 house, and we have hitching rings embedded in the sidewalks. The city I live in has made them historical so even if the sidewalk gets rebuilt over time, they are reinstalled. I always thought that a nice way to remember history.
That's cool!
I remember a lot of them back in the 60s, rarely see them now 😥😢
The way things are going, they will probably be used again when we go back to the days without electricity.
@@nonhominid Exactly what I was thinking.
My PA German hometown had hitching rings embedded in the cement walls behind the hardware store where the Amish folk would come to buy seed, gardening equipment, etc. They would hitch up their horse and buggies and enter the store at the rear of the building. Later a wooden hitching post was built so the buggies would not be hit by cars....it was off the street so the buggies and animals were safe. I am sure it is still well used today because the Amish are still living in the surrounding countryside.
Still have the wooden laundry chute door in my house bathroom that was built in the early 1920s. When we used to use it, we'd keep a basket in the basement to catch the laundry we'd throw down the chute. Seems like a good thing to keep around when raising a family.
Couldn't agree more.. love mine.. something about the craftsmanship of older homes. 💜✌️
My childhood home had the same thing and we also put a basket in the basement to catch the laundry. Neat.
I think they are really cool, but they are not allowed in new homes. They are some kind of fire hazard, IDK the specifics.
@@amarketing8749 Supposedly let’s the fire travel between floors easily.
Yep, mines in the upstairs hallway and I couldn't imagine life without it.
I recall back in the 1950's many people had incinerators in which we burned up our trash; also in the backyard we had a circular clothes line.
in some rural areas, burning trash outside was still done. the ashes were used as a soil amendment in their vegetable garden. pollution was negligible. in many countries burning trash is still the preferred method of disposal.
I still have a circular clothesline. They are very common in the UK. 🇬🇧
@@suppylarue220 No burning leaves in NJ but moved to PA & completely acceptable.
I believe circular clothes lines are still available in my state, at least they were until fairly recently.
Until I read this I forgot our house from the 50s had an incinerator when I was very young, behind the huge furnace. Dad had it removed because he feared we kids would get hurt.
We built our retirement home five years ago in the country. We include double hung windows which have a similar function to the transom windows, a root cellar, a 1950’s window fan that pulls the night air through the house and a wood burning stove for winter heat that is disbursed through out the house by a 1940’s oscillating fan. A small amount of work with a big financial savings.
@gontowrstexas...
They allow you to burn wood?? The ecology police don't bother you. Lucky!!!
@Sean Embry Am 53. Never in my life have I, or anyone I knew, had to brush the dead bugs off of their radiator to keep their car from overheating. No doubt this has happened during infrequent large spawns but never as a matter of course.
Not saying we don't have problems, but your moronic "proof" is proof of nothing.
P
Great post. P.S. It's 'dispersed', not 'disbursed'.
I miss double-hung windows. The house I grew up in had them. We would lower the tops one one side of the house and raise the bottoms on the other side to get a nice convection going.
"Dumbwaiter" refers to the older definition of "dumb" meaning "silent", not "stupid", as they silently delivered items to other areas of the home.
Speaking tubes were still being used in new multi-story buildings into the 1940s.
I thought he was going to say something about AOC there ;)
@@stevebabiak6997 No...she is a dumbass.😂 Her constituents are ignoramuses.
@@stevebabiak6997 Why do people want to make everything political? Try and have a normal conversation every once and awhile. It does a mind good.
@@stevebabiak6997 More like Perjury Taylor Greene or Lauren Boba
@@stevebabiak6997 You mean MJT of course Babs.
My elementary school had windows above all the doors that went into the classroom. They also had those old radiator heat that made a tink tink sound and would be really hot if you touched them.
When we were kids growing up, I loved putting my feet on the radiators in the winter in the house I grew up in, and yep, they could be noisy especially when they heated up.
Holy f@k!
How old are you??!
Like 100!!!?????
Yah ...I remember them to...
Good times!
@@jonjacobjingleheimerschmid3798 pretty close lol
@@jonjacobjingleheimerschmid3798 About 70. Lol. Hey, I also walked to school every day. Uphill. Even in the winter.
@@cynthiamurphy3669 Uphill, BOTH ways! Lol.
We had a whole house fan in my childhood home. We also had air conditioning. The nice thing about the big fan you could turn it on at night and open your windows. The house cooled down so quick. My uncle still has these fans in his house and garage.
The house I sold in 2021 had a whole house fan. I used it in the spring and fall when it cooled down at night.
They work better than air conditioners. The huge amount of air they can move as opposed to an FAU is no comparison, with the insulated walls of houses, the temperature outside can be 10-20° lower than the inside. They can cool an entire house in under ten minutes, when the FAU takes 30 minutes, at many times the energy cost. No compressor, just a big fan.
בס'ד
@@KelikakuCoutin My mom says the same thing, they are better than AC.
We had one of those too when I was little, I loved it. Like others have said it would cool the house down in minutes and the breeze was awesome for sleeping!
I have a whole house fan in mine as well. It's called a swamp cooler. If I turn the pump off, it's a whole house fan.
I worked in the elevator trade for a number of years and once in a while ran across these dumbwaiters in older large homes...which was very cool. They usually were powered by pulling on a rope to go up or down. I did get the chance to see a larger rope hand operated elevator at an old morgue. Cool stuff!
The old walkup, railroad-room apartment where I grew up had a dumbwaiter in the kitchen, and gaslight fixtures on the walls.
I visited an old farmhouse that was up for sale which contained many of these features.There was a root cellar with many bins, a dumb waiter, and fireplaces all over. There was a summer kitchen so the heat would not make the house hotter in the warm months. There was a lightning rod or two, and a communication tube between the house and the barn. All the paint and wallpaper was still in place and most in good repair. The attic had some kind of setup that allowed one to pull the frame of the house back into "square" so the home remained upright and not askew...hard to explain, but genius.
My favorite thing was the very large ballroom with parquet floors in excellent condition and candlelit chandeliers and numerous mirrors to accentuate the twirling, happy dancers. What a lot of thought went into this home and the lofted barns, paddocks, and fields. I wish I had been up to the stairs and housekeeping of that beautiful but very large house! One would have needed a large family to do all the work!
@@camerrill
Sounds beautiful.
Fascinating story. Did you take any pictures? I would love to see some of those things....especially a contraption that dealt with the frame of the house. Thank you for sharing.
My church had a dumbwaiter and it was used during church dinners. Later, a fellowship hall was built on the kitchen level. I don't know if they did away with the dumbwaiter. It is probably still there unless that part of the church has been renovated.
The house that my wife and I purchased 40 years ago was built in 1873 and has many of these features. In addition, it also has pocket doors. We still open all of the transom windows and run the attic fan (which was a later addition) on many spring and fall days when air conditioning would be overkill. The farmer that originally built the house must've been pretty well off.
That sounds like a marvelous house.
@@pegs1659 Thank you. We love it and all 3 of our now adult kids still call it home!
I remember the whole-house-fan that my grandmother's house, which had a flat roof, had in the cockloft; it was an event when that thing came on. They still sell them, but I'd want one with an automatic shutoff triggered by the smoke detectors; that updraft would spread a fire through the house in minutes.
@mike Brown...
Don't charge rent, I bet!!!!
@@stephenperretti8847 They don't live with us. They all have their own lives and families but they still come home.
The central vac is actually much better than any portable vac. My parents installed one in 2000. More powerful and rarely needs to be emptied.
My parents had our house built in 1970 & it had the central vac system. Even in the garage. Was great to get all the sand out of the wagon.
Central vac is not part of the past but because of cost most people can not afford to have one put in a new home. My parents house built in 92 has one. It’s so much better then a vacuum.
@@lauramohr9071 Why was it affordable in the 1950s or 1960s, but not now?
@@genxx2724 Inflation, and people mistakenly thinking that a weak battery or automatic vacuum that only gets what's on the surface, is all that any vacuum can get.
People today haven't been taught about the deep down dirt...the sand that goes to the bottom of the pile and cuts the carpet fibers loose. They think vacuuming is all about the surface stuff they can see. Their grandmothers and great-grandmothers should have a talk with them.
A central vac takes all, the really fine dust that gets into your lungs out of the house. And, they are almost silent. The noise is in the basement or garage.
I lived in St. Louis after my first job after college in 1980. Bought a 1952 brick rancher in StL with a ceiling vent fan in hallway into the attic. Wow did that thing suck the cooler air in at night during the Summer. Still worked perfectly when I sold the house in 2004. Passed city inspection too. :)
I grew up in a St Louis 50s home with an attic fan.
If you ever notice, fire depts will use their fans to clear a building by pulling air in instead of out. Actually more efficient.
Ditto in STL. The house I grew up in had an attic fan . It finally died in about 2010.
Jim, I was fortunate enough to move next door to an older guy and his wife after I bought that house after college in 1980 in StL. He showed me how to oil the motor every year and clean the blades. What a super guy. WW2 vet. Taught me a lot about taking care of a house which I treasure. Tks for your comment. :)
Oh in the early '70s the house I lived in had the attic fan which made me uncomfortable as it was in the hallway close to my bedroom. Was glad not to see it again when we moved out (I wasn't 8 yet lol). One more thing: the laundry chute. My aunt and uncle had one in their big old house which was a big help as they had 3 kids, all pre-teens then.
The house in which I live has the window above the door and I have used laundry shoots and I loved them. Thank you for another wonderful look back 🙂
Thank you !
I'm electrician and I do a lot of work in Westfield, New Jersey. I thoroughly enjoy working in old homes and its really become the niche of my business. I replace knob & tube wiring, old devices like switches & receptacles, and install new lighting. It's fascinating to me how the old timers used to wire homes. I have definitely seen my share of "root cellars" but I never knew what that was until seeing this video. This was a fascinating video doc.
I'm a sparky as well, but I primarily wire custom home, many are multi million dollars, in various parts of South Carolina but usually near the Greenville area. Although I have worked in older home and seen those cute push button switches and some knob and tube, which was disconnected but left in place, probably for looks as they had newer romex running along side it, to the newer breaker panel. In fact when I lived in Pontiac Michigan several years ago, I may have save the lives of my elderly neighbors. I get home from the grocery store on a cold November night when I go banging on their front door telling them to get out there is smoke and some flames coming from the attic vent. Sadly their home was a total loss and melted the vinyl siding of the house I was renting. The investigation showed the fire started in the attic, at a splice between the knob and tube system, and some romex wiring. The neighbors just purchased the home earlier that same year and said it passed a home inspection, the electrical system appeared to be up to date. The home was a two story balloon framed built in the late 1920s, about 80 years old at the time of the fire. The walls acted as a chimney for the fire and it was intense by the time the fire department arrived .
Be careful and only make splices in approved enclosures. That way if something fails it should be safely contained, and in my experience, except for rare occasions like someone hanging a picture and driving a nail through the wire, all problems happened at splices and terminations.
My modern built house has a central vacuum system. Its brilliant, convenient and so powerful it could suck your slippers off your feet! I don;t understand why more homes don't have one and how I ever lived without it.
Then Dyson couldn't sell you a $700 vacuum every 4 years...
All the houses on our street came with them. Built in early 70’s.
My house was built in 1936 and it has two laundry chutes. One upstairs and one in the kitchen. I LOVE and use them all the time. This house has a door knocker too. I thought it was black and tried to clean it before painting it,but as I cleaned it, it turned out to be solid brass. I bought brasso and polished it up. Beautiful now. Crystal doorknobs on every door with brass ornate plate surrounding them.
Back in the 70s, my uncle owned an 1890s Victorian. He was the second owner and there was still a carriage house around back. There were speaking tubes in the walls, but these were probably retrofitted gas lines from the old lighting fixtures -they had a porcelain mouthpiece with a metal flap one lifted to use. Victorian coffin niches were generally used on staircases that were narrow and/or had tight turns. It was expected a person would pass away upstairs, so families sometimes kept a reusable casket in the attic and funerals were held at the home in the parlor.
I'd think they could be just as useful taking other types of furniture up and down.
@@keouine Judging from the size of some period furniture, I'm sure those niches came in handy. Locally, there are about two Victorians that are rather intact and fully furnished with original/period decor/furnishings -though upstairs areas are off limits due to handicap laws.
I strongly suspect the coffin niche term is a myth. From the staircases shown, and the narrowest ones I've seen, a coffin can be taken down by lowering the foot end and raising the head. I'm a paramedic and have sometimes had to take someone downstairs on what we call a scoop stretcher. We did it just like that, no niche required, on some very narrow tight staircases. The other solution for the coffin problem is - carry the person down first, *then* put them in the coffin!
A reusable coffin?😳😬 What do they do with the 💀 body, in order to reuse the coffin?⚰️
@@tophorn7348 These were just used to display the body when the funeral/viewing was held at the home. Usually a slightly ornate toe-pincher. After the service, the deceased were placed in another for actual burial. The display coffin would then be placed back into storage for the next family member. In some cases, the coffin may even be a wicker design. Common practice back in the day?? Not too much... I've had a few vintage caskets/coffins over the years, and a few hearses....😎
My parents bought their house in the 1977, it was remodeled by the previous owners but they kept the ironing board cabinet and another cabinet in the kitchen next to the stove that has shelves in it which I'm assuming was for storing spices although my mother didn't use it for that, she used it as a medicine cabinet. Also, their neighbor right next door had already been living there years before my parents moved in next door and she NEVER did any kind of remodeling or upgrading to her house, her house was exactly the same since the day she and her late husband bought it when they married right after High School up until she passed away two years ago at almost 100 yrs old, and her house also had the ironing board cabinet, the cabinet with shelves in the kitchen next to the stove, all original old doors with old doorknobs that still lock and unlock with a skeleton key, old light fixtures, and original old windows, the same furniture that she bought when her and her late husband moved in, it was like going back in time, it was the only house in the area that was still exactly the same since they built it, it was like time stood still, but what I liked the most about her house is that the kitchen still has a little door that opens from the outside and it's where MANY years ago the milkman would drop off the glass milk jugs.
Our milk came in a five gallon can! I remember you had to let it sit and then gently scoop off the top 4 or 5 inches that was cream ! They made butter and other stuff out of it! Always delicious!
@@sunderwood9321 Oh wow, it's cool to hear all these stories of how things were before and how they have changed throughout the years... thanks.
@@sunderwood9321 yeah I remember the milkman but do you remember the soda man and the beer man? That’s when all beverages were sold in returnable bottles and all you actually paid for was the liquids unless you broke a bottle then you had to pay for it
In regards tp the "horse blocks". We still have wrought iron rings attached to the curb for tying horses in front of our church here in Portland, OR.
I was born in 1932 and was fortunate enough to grow up in Southeast Portland in an area originally known as Mt. Tabor. My home was built in 1888 by my great grandfather who dug the basement by hand with a shovel. There was a dumbwaiter, which was called a "woodlift" to bring coal up from the basement for use in the pot-bellied stove in the living room, or to carry home-canned foods down to a small spider-infested storage room in the basement. No fans, no laundry chutes, but it was a wonder-
ful, creaky old house. There was a cistern outside the back door to collect rainwater for my great
grandparents to use. And of course there was a horse ring in the curb in front of the house. Many, many
lovely memories!
@@virginiagrabow4528 That is a wonderful story. I enjoyed it very much.
Have you ever thought about writing a story or two for the Good Old Days Magazine? Or there's also another one called Reminisce.
We almost still need them for the trucks and suv's everyone think they now absolutely need. Though many have then lowered and turned into station wagon's but aren't called that because it isn't fashionable. They are "crossovers"
Laundry chutes! I grew up in a 3-story home and I loved throwing my laundry in the chute. It fell down to the basement and it was MAGICALLY cleaned, folded, and put back into my drawers. 😀
We just opened the basement door and tossed it down and the same magic happened. Poof…back in the drawer all cleaned and folded. 😂😂
Thank your Mother, the magician!
I just throw the dirty clothes at my husband, then after he would throw the clean clothes back at me, it's a wonderful system we have !
@@lindagregory6877 🤣
Ha, ha, good one! My Mom was the magician who eventually taught me her magic. Ha, ha.
Laundry chutes and dumb waiters were so nice in an old farm house we lived in. So practical. Now our condo has 28 total stairs to the laundry in the basement. I miss root callers and built in ironing boards. Ah, so many practical and beautiful accessories. Thanks
I lived in an apartment building (still standing) that had built in ironing boards in every apartment. Some of them still had functional ironing boards. Others had the boards removed and shelving installed in their place, creating a small pantry.
I thought laundry chutes were great. Too bad there still aren't devices to wash, fold, & transport clean laundry back upstairs.
@@squalli1297 That is called kids.
After living in small condos for years, I eventually bought a wall mounted ironing board that closed up to a cabinet door.
That was nearly 15 years ago, so I believe that they can still be purchased to install. It is too bad that they’re not built into all small apartments.
@@diatribe5 Yes, you can buy them at online home improvement stores. They also make desks that fold into a cabinet on the wall.
I grew up in a house with the Butler’s pantry, a laundry chute, and the central vacuum system. Didn’t have any transom windows, but we did have sleeping porches.
Very fancy. Like a throw back to a gentler time
This was a great upload! Thoroughly enjoyed it!! Thank you!! 😊
I work in a library that used to be a manor home for the town mayor. The building dates back to the 1800s, and there is a transom window above the front door. I never knew what its proper name was, nor what its true function was. You taught me something tonight!
@sabrina 79...
Worked in a library, and never thought to look it up????
😂
In my modern home we recreated the transom effect. Cut a hole above the door and put an AC vent over that to mask it. That helped tremendously to equalize the temp in all rooms.
Our home was built in 2000 and it has a central vacuum. Wife loves it.
I think I would like that too. Sounds quite convenient.
I never really liked our central vac. The tube was so long and bulky. I really preferred a vacuum cleaner. To each her own, I guess.
Great memories, thanks.
0:42 We used to live in a home in California that had a laundry chute. If I'm not mistaken, the house was built back in 1932, and it was found in my bedroom. I wish they were in more homes today.
We had one, too, in this old house in OH. There must have been some rough edges inside of it because things would keep getting stuck in them, making it necessary to dump heavy items in to free the stuck laundry.
We had one put in; our upstairs hallway was a stair landing, directly over the entrance to the garage. With the chute installed in the hallway, the laundry dropped directly into the garage. We used to keep a big cardboard box below the chute to collect the clothes that dropped from the garage's ceiling. It looked exactly like the ones in the video. The contractor used a rope with a small 8 oz. plastic bottle tied to the end, after filling it with sand, to pull the hatch closed. All the bedrooms in the house opened up into that stair landing. That old bottle is still in there, since the '70s.
My brother and his wife built a new home in early 2000's with a central vacuum system. The house I grew up in was built in 1965. In the bathrooms it had a laundry cabinet at floor level big enough for a laundry basket to sit inside and a fold out laundry shoot just above it. Fold open the shoot and throw the dirty clothes into the basket below. A really nice feature.
Chute.
The previous owners of our '70 house build in cabinets below the laundry chute in the basement. They had a basket sitting on top of one side of the cabinets. We extended the chute and now the laundry goes directly into the cabinet, no basket in side but we can access the cabinet from its side also that is in the laundry area.
And with all the power outages we may need to go back to these type of systems. They work.
Regarding the carriage blocks, every time I watch the 1947 film _Life With Father_ with William Powell and Itene Dunne, there is a scene that shows a carriage block, only I never knew what that rectangular piece of stone was. All it had was the owner's name carved into it -- "Clarence Day". I wondered why it was there as, it looked like a good way for people to trip over it, right there at the curb. Finally, the question has been answered. A carriage stepping stone and a means to mount a horse! Makes sense now. Thank you!
I loved that show! I also had no idea what it was, and forgot about that block. They had an enormous apartment in New York, and because he was a wall street tycoon, it was very luxurious. There were those beautiful pocket doors separating the parlour where a very young Liz Taylor told her suitor she was a Methodist. My sister has pocket doors in her house, but they're just single doors, not the wall sized doors in the Day's apartment.
I grew up in a house that had a clothes chute and coal cellar. I now live in an old apt building that has the windows over the doors. Great video.
Our coal cellar, no longer in use, had a chute, with a small cast-iron door that opened to the outdoors at ground level. Coal supplier would fit truck chute to basement chute to deliver coal.
@@vincegay986 When I was a kid we had the heavy cast-iron door, about 2 feet square for coal delivery. It would dump into the basement onto the floor into an enclosure that looked like a horse stall. I remember Dad shoveling coal into the furnace about 4 times per day during winter.
Oh, yeah the coal cellar! I remember as a really small child a load of coal being delivered. The chute from the truck would run through an open cellar window. I think the coal cellar was open to the rest of the cellar and must have sent a lot of coal dust throughout the cellar. This fascinated me as a little kid, probably a pre-K kid. You brought back a memory for me.
@@virginiasoskin9082 Yes, coal dust was an issue. I think our cellar only had one pull-chain light fixture by the coal bin....it was a spooky place. lol
Colonial to Victorian ice houses were behind most mansions... maybe 15 x 20 feet, one story, the walls two feet thick filled with sawdust... in midwinter, locals would saw blocks of ice from lakes to put in these houses... lakes were rented out for this purpose to ice companies... wooden sailing ships actually carried ice from New England to India in the 19th century!!!
My genetic local knowledge from Cape Cod Massachusetts !!! A wonderful place to grow un in the 1950's :)>
Great information! Thanks for sharing those details!
We had an icehouse in the backyard. Smaller than the one you describe, but with the double walls filled with sawdust. The floor was about two feet below ground level for extra coolness from the earth, and it was a dirt floor. We used it as a tool shed. This was a nice home, but not a mansion at all, just another house on the block - but the only one with an icehouse.
I’m sure glad I didn’t live in days of no air conditioning!! Louisiana is hell on earth
I AM FROM LOUISIANA,WE DIDN'T HAVE A C TILL 65 .BEING RAISED IN SLIDELL IN THE 50S AND 60S. HEAT WAS NOT A PROBLEM.IT GET YOU READY FOR THE AFTERLIFE. GOD BLESS
So is Florida
I’ll add SC to that list as well. 🥵🥵
We lived in a small, no-frills, old farmhouse in CT back in the 50s. No air conditioning, and the place certainly didn't have any of those ceiling fans. We spent a couple unspeakable summers trying to get to sleep on hot nights until Dad brought home a large box fan, mounted it in the window facing outward, and sucked the hot air out of the house that way. The cooler air that came later in the night also made it comfortable after the hot air was gone.
Ahh the good ole days when we slept with windows up and door open to stay cool at night
I have a door knocker on my door and NO ONE EVER USES IT! Drives me CRAZY! It's right there, USE IT. It sounds louder than the typical mousy baby taps that people do for knocks, which I can never hear.
I'm sure a lot of people don't use it cuz they don't know what it is
@@TheChuckoluck how can that be? It's so obvious what it is.
@@lilsheba1 Only because you've seen them in use. If you've never seen one in use you won't know what it's for.
Maybe attach a humorous sign next to it explaining its use.
Great video. Thank you !
My house was built in the '70s, I think. I have an attic fan that works great. It's a little on the noisy side but it sure can pull that cool night air in
Maybe needs some WD-40?
@@phoenixobrien163 They are just noisy - the flow of air over the louvers makes them shake - as a kid, we knew when the attic fan was on because you could hardly hear anything else - lol.
I very much enjoyed the video. My grandparents had a root cellar. I loved to go in it during the summer time because it was always so much cooler. I can still remember the distinct smell of dirt.
When I was growing up, my dad would dig a root cellar in the garden. Then come soring would fill it in and plant a huge garden. Then we would cold pack bottle the garden. We grew enough garden to have a years supply of fresh food.
Never thought I would miss those days but now that I am older, I really do.
Love these videos!! Keep them coming.
There are a lot of items you mentioned that I was unaware of. So, very cool to see them!
My dad’s parents had a huge clothes shut that was big enough for my sibs, cousins and me to take turns getting into and sliding down to the laundry room and into a big pile of dirty clothes or sheets and towels. On a cold winter’s day or when it was raining outside we little kids would check to make sure that there was a big pile of clothes on the floor in the laundry room and then run upstairs to the bathroom, open up the chute and slide down to the laundry room. We could do that for hours and never get bored. When we got too big for the chute we would go sledding down the steep basement stairs on big pieces of cardboard that my grandpa would get from home furnishings stores. My sibs and I did this at home too.
My home is nearly 80 years old and has an ironing board cupboard in the kitchen. The previous owners turned it into a small cupboard with several shelves which are perfect for putting all of our mugs in. It’s interesting to visit our neighbors’ homes to see what they’ve done with their ironing board cupboards.
The modern log home my husband and I have lived in for the past 15 years has a central vacuum system and I absolutely love it! I also have a cordless Dyson vacuum attached to a wall on the main level of the home for quick vacuuming jobs. We recently sold our home and are in the process of moving to a smaller, single level home. We purchased a regular vacuum for our new home and I must say I miss my central vacuum! The electrical cord on the new vacuum is constantly underfoot. I think every home should have a central vacuum system built into it; they’re fantastic!
My parents had the built-in vacuum system in two houses that we successively lived in. Both systems made by Sears.
I lived in a 70's split level house, that had the central vac. I loved it. It was great for vacuuming the carpeted steps.
My Aunt had a central vacuum system in her home in Cape Cod. I remember as a little kid in the 60’s, playing with the outlets with my siblings, when we visited.
Where I grew up in Philadelphia the old homes had roofs over the driveway to keep those getting out of carridges dry. The carridge shed was around back.
Door knockers were once removable. Not having the knocker on the door was a way to tell guests they were not home or were not accepting visitors.
Didn't know that one! Thanks!
Nowadays that would be a invite to thieves!
One of our first houses in Chicago was a brick bungalow. It had 6 rooms on the first and only level, but had an unfinished basement with a laundry area. It had a closet in the middle of the house next to the washroom. In that closet was a access panel to the bathtub plumbing. Being enough room in the corner, my dad cut out and hinged a door and made a chute to the basement laundry area…..it was a great help. Years later our custom home in a suburb had laundry on the second floor and had a central vacuum. For our later years we bought a ranch home in a subdivision with a basement and a 3 car garage. We added a central A/C system, a whole house fan (in the middle of the home, in a hallway, in the ceiling and controls in the closet adjacent) and a central vacuum. The central vacuum I installed and purchased myself. The builders cost for this was $2600. I bought all the parts for about $700, including the power broom and attachments (this was not supplied by the builder with the central vac system). I had never in stalled such a system but was pretty DIY orientated. About 2 months after moving in (2003) I had a week off before Christmas, with my 9 year old grandson, we installed the system. The system has 3 attachment points on the first floor, 4 in our finished basement and workshop and one in the garage. It’s in the garage by the house door entrance to the laundry/mudroom and the hose and attachments are next to it. This Is my wife’s favorite way to vacuum, because of the light weight and easy way to do this, easier to operate vs. a regular push vacuum. All central vacuums have a built-in canaster that is usually on the bottom of the unit and can have a paper bag or not, ours doesn’t. It’s been operating for 19 years and has never been repaired or replaced. The hardest part of this system is finding someone that sells 10 foot plastic pipe that’s used for these systems. I found a local electrical supply that sold me 16 pipes for $4.04 each, this pipe is not the same as the pvc plumbing pipe, it’s thinner wall. Thanks…Jim
I love historic homes. I'd love a house with most or all of these features.
Very nice! The ironing-board cabinet is something I miss from my old house.
What about those built ins? Usually in the upstairs hallway. Linen closet.
You can still buy and install them.
I grew up in a house with a central vacuum. It was awesome, just plug in a go. Biggest drawback was dumping the canister and when it died and no one knew how to fix it.
I had no trouble finding a repair/service place for a central vac in south Florida
The vacuum unit was usually mounted in the basement or garage, so the noise was isolated. They were quite powerful and of "shop-vac" power and quality.
During the redevelopment craze of the 1950s in San Francisco, they removed and sold the hitching posts found in front of large Victorians. You can still see them on sidewalks around the city.
Grew up in columbus ohio and you can still see the squares of stone to mount horses and enter into carriages
My 1838 house had the stepping stone but I needed to add the horse hitch! We also had a laundry shoot on the 2nd story. I’ve added laundry shoot to at least a couple houses I’ve owned. The house I free up in from 1951 had one so it was expected in my houses! I loved my historical home! Miss it terribly!
Or maybe a laundry CHUTE?
*chute
Back in the 60s my best friend's house had that central vacuum system. The house was small with 2 bedrooms downstairs and a larger one on the third. 2 parents- 7 kids. The 3rd floor was where the 4 sons slept and all their beds were Murphy's. What a house- what a great family!
@@tamedshrew235 Wow! How many baths? My moms oldest brother had 11 kids. The had a three bedroom one bath until they added two more beds & two baths. Big eat in kitchen space. I loved going over there. The four oldest were girls all around my age.
@@samanthab1923 lol
The 1940 bungalow that I grew up in, in the 60's, had an attic fan and a built in ironing board. That attic fan pulled in cool night air and tons of humidity. (Baton Rouge)
I never would have guessed that but it makes sense.
In the late 1940s I attended a school in Colorado that had transom windows over the main doors of each classroom to allow air flow. Our farmhouse had a coal room in the basement, and Daddy would call each month for a delivery of coal in a truck that backed up to a certain window that opened for a chute to empty coal into the room that had a locked door so we kids could not get in. My grandmother had a house with a dirt floor basement. Spooky! A relative on a farm in Missouri had a root cellar dug into the side of a small hill that doubled as a safe hideout during tornado season.
Where in Colorado?
@@tootsiebabe3555 We had a small farm in Lakewood, Colorado, 8 miles west of Denver.
That is a wonderful story. I enjoyed it very much. As I have some others here as well.
Have you ever thought about writing a story or two for the Good Old Days Magazine? And there's also another one called Reminisce.
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER GOOD IDEA. I will look into it. I have been writing the story of my childhood growing up in the 1940s and 50s to pass on to my sons. Thanks for the tip! Much appreciated.
@@charity2275 Sounds wonderful!
I remembered my grandparents home had a laundry chute near the bedrooms of their home. Even seeing an attic door in one of the bedrooms looked pretty old in a closet. Even the vents around the house was big square shape for the heat. They even had a fireplace that they didn’t used at all. I think their house was built in the 1930’s. Even this one family had built a home in the late 1980’s had a central vacuum in the house and even a laundry chute for the upstairs 2 bedrooms. To me it was so cool. I grew up in a 1970’s style home with out of those things in it. I liked having wood paneling in one room in the house. That one room was the family room. It was the most comfortable room in the house at that time.
I knew about all of these features and enjoyed the video. If you do more of these, you should describe a sleeping porch.
Also houses no longer have sunporches or back stairs.
I enjoyed this very much 🥰
I have a room in my house that was originally used as a laundry "pass-through". The washer and dryer are in the back hall. This room is at the back of the house and laundry would be taken there for folding and ironing. It still has a fold-down ironing board in the wall. There is also a door leading outside which gave easy access to the clothesline.
Here in Northern California outside Sacramento summer temps 90 to 105 but most evenings temps 65-75. Whole house fans are still very popular. Please do a video about the Sizzler when you can.
I live in a 3 story Victorian built for a doctor in 1893. At that time, the town had no running water supplied to the homes. I have a picture of my home taken when it was first built. The picture shows the roof gutters several feet above the edge of the roof line. Rain water was captured and run inside the house and stored in a large water tank in the third floor. This water was used to operate the one flush toilet in the house. I doubt the water was used for drinking as it couldn't be very clean. But at least the good doctor had "indoor plumbing" as most houses of that time still employed "out houses".
The old house I grew up with had those windows
I had the pull out ironing board in an apartment in my 20’s. I loved it. I used it every morning before work.
I grew up in a house with an attic fan. I once lived in a house with a floor furnace in the hall floor. My school had radiators and transom windows.
We had a floor furnace in a couple of houses we lived in. When I was 8 years old I would jump over the one in the house because I was scared of it. I came to find out when I was 3 I fell on the one in that house and was burned pretty badly on my right leg. They said I has a waffle print burn for months.
My Nans beach house had that big grate on the floor. Scared me when I was little
Hi, thank you for this wonderful and important video. It's like stepping back in time!!! I love them.
I wish I lived in the old days. Today sucks.
🙄
@@davidpearson3304 thank you for that. You're awesome. I'm glad you felt the need to reply with that emoji.
Thank you so much Recollection Road for uploading this great video, I appreciate it!
When I was a child, we lived in a 2 story old farmhouse...in the center of the upstairs, in the floor, was a metal grate (not stamped, it was cast iron) which was used to passively circulate the warm air from downstairs to the cooler upstairs.
Cool stuff. Thanks 👍.
We had a laundry chute in the house I grew up in. Interesting tidbit about the coffin corner, first time I've heard that one. As for door knockers, whenever I see a door knocker I automatically think of Marley's ghost from A Christmas Carol. A bit of undigested beef indeed.
They are really for sculptures and vases.
Yes! Especially the animated Magoo one!
This randomly popped up. so I watched, liked & subscribed.
Well done and THANK YOU.
The house I grew up in during the 1950s, was built in 1907 and contained many of the features shown. One item I don't see in large homes are French Windows which opened onto a porch from either the living room or dining room.
Butler’s pantries are hugely popular in higher end houses right now…often with little doors that open into the garage so you can load groceries directly from your car into the pantry without climbing the little flight of stairs from the garage to the house. They also contain all the unsightly small appliances you don’t want cluttering your counters in the kitchen. Sometimes even with a computer nook for looking up recipes and such. My cousin and I love checking out the big new houses during the Parade of Homes. :)
I live in an old building and there is a transom window above my front door but unfortunately the place has been remodeled so many times it has pipes going through it so it's completely non functional! My aunt lived in a really beautiful house in San Jose CA that had a stairway very similar to the one shown. She once saw an article about houses but in it there used to be an indent with an urn so she didn't think it was the same. But then my cousin went up the stairs and she noticed that there was actually one that was plastered over! That stairway also had an incredibly sharp turn at the top I nearly fell down because a few of the first steps were as narrow as a few inches wide! Those eventually became outlawed to build anymore!
My house had a transom window above the back door but they put a wood panel in it. I could have it put back in but they sided the house and it's covered on the outside. I still have 2 old Windows (the others were replaced) they kind that open from the top and have chains to hold them. There was also an outside door into the cellar that they got rid of too. I wish that was still there.
My brother's house also had a transom over the front door but the glass was cracked when he bought the house. He had it taken out and a stained glass window made for it...but it doesn't open it looks beautiful though.
I've been preparing to move from South Florida to West Virginia and many of the things you showed here are in the houses I've been considering to purchase.
We had a central vacuum system when I was growing up. My sister lives in the house now and uses it!
We use our root cellar as intended. We have a butler's pantry which we use for china, silverware and serving dishes as well as a breakfast nook. Our old home had a built in ironing board as well as a milk door.
Whole house fans are not obsolete. They are common in California. I've owned three newer homes with them. We just had one installed in a remodel. When the outside temperature is equal or cooler than the inside temperature, we turn off the air conditioning, open the windows and turn on the whole house fan. It runs on a timer and typically turns off in the morning before it gets warm. Then we close the windows. The A.C. doesn't turn on until the early or mid afternoon, saving electricity.
They're also good for removing unwanted cooking smells in the house. I wouldn't own a house without one here.
I've never seen an old house here with an originally-installed whole house fan. They're rather new things (well, within the last twenty or thirty years, up to the present).
Attic fans aren't the same thing as a whole house fan for the nit pickers.
My parent's house up north midwest had the perfect opening to the attic. It is just a piece of plywood that coincidence is the exact size of a box fan. When it cools down in the afternoon, I would put the box fan to High there and you could feel the breeze pulling cool air through the house vs AC.
We had neighbors around the corner from us that had a house built around 1880. They had an elegant two step curbstone made of marble that had the name of the street carved into it. Our little village was a national hub for marble quarrying back in the day, so there's a lot of it in the remaining old buildings.
I live in Phoenix Arizona, I dont know how people back in the days before A/C didn't die of heat stroke especially in their all wool clothes or the time and suits and huge to the floor dresses for the ladies. Must have been terrible
Too much concrete in AZ now. Even in summer, Phoenix AZ cooled off at night in the 1960 so we put on sweaters. The desert used to always be cool to cold at night. In the daytime we had swamp cooling that was perfect!
@@Lili-xq9sn its too bad its like this now. I wish they hadn't developed do huge. It would be nice to have open desert and to see the stars
@@bladerunner752 Phoenix was little then, I think it was the best time to live there. But even on City streets, watch out when the wind blew, because a huge tumbleweed could nail you... it really hurt, lol.
They didn't wear wool in the summer. 🙄
@@aloysiusdevanderabercrombi470 The fabrics available in 1860 were wool, linen, cotton and silk. Silk and wool were the preferred fabrics, but cotton could be used for simple "wash" dresses. Since not all dyes were colorfast in this time period, there are almost no examples of solid colored cottons. Plaids, stripes, dots and other geometric fabric designs were preferred.
Silk was used for nice dresses such as for church, visiting and light shopping. It was also used for evening and ball gowns. Silks could be solid, "changeable" (woven with two different colors so it shimmered), as well as the list of prints above for cotton.
Wool was available in a wide variety of weights, from light-weight sheer fabric to heavier coat-weight fabric. Wool is fire retardant and it also wicks moisture very well. It was therefore often used for petticoats, outer wear and cooking outfits, as well as for regular dresses.
My friend has a victorian home, with both a horse block and hitching post out front.
His mother had them declared historical landmarks so they cannot be removed.
The house is amazing, has two staircases one for servants, and maids quarters, that are a separate‘floor’ on the 2nd and 3rd floors. There are secret passageways. It is a very cool house to play hide and seek in.
Thanks R.R.👏😊
Back when we could still safely sleep with our windows open, we'd push the beds close to the window in the summer, so the whole house fan in the hallway could draw the cool night air across us. Some summer nights I'd get downright chilled by the breeze.
This is one reason I wish we lived in a two story home so we could leave our windows open at night. But here in FL we usually have either AC or heat on -- one or the other; and with crime being what it can be, you don't feel safe in a one story home leaving windows open at night. when I was a kid in PA in the 1950s, Mom would always leave our windows wide open in summer, and would open them a crack in winter. She believed in fresh air when sleeping and we were never cold at night because she was a quilt maker and could always pile another quilt on top of us. We never woke up groggy in the AM because of that fresh air all night. We used to rearrange our beds in summer to be right under the window, or else sleep with our pillows at the foot of the bed to catch more breeze.
@@virginiasoskin9082 Growing up in the 60's we didn't even lock the house doors. Keys were left in the cars and no one bothered any of them. Today crime is up by 1,000% above the time when I was growing up. A person that spoke their mind back then was admired. Today the "woke" calls for them to be silenced and cancelled! My end is near and I'm sure there's lots of "woke" people that'll be glad when my generation is gone. I'm just glad to have been able to grow up and live during the best times this country has ever seen!
I live in a big city in a one-story house. I installed window locks on them, so that we can leave the window open 4-6 inches. Works very well.
@@justdoingitjim7095 It feels like crime has gone up by 1000%, but it's that you've gotten older and are noting it more. Plus, you have the internet that brings you way more crimes that you would have never heard of 20 years ago when people depended on the newspaper or nightly news for information. Crime has been happening since the beginning of time. It's not new. What is new is how the information is brought to you.
In the 60s/70s I grew up in a house built in the 1800s. There was a cistern in the basement that had been used to collect rainwater before indoor plumbing had been installed. There was also a hand pump in the back yard where there was a still-functioning well.
Oh for the good old days. What will people do when the power goes out and times get tough?
Laundry shoots are such a great idea.
Funny thing, that "Central Vacuum" ,,,, something I've only "heard" of/about until we've bought this (current)home, built in '99, we 've bought it in '06. It has this, one of the strangest things I've seen!
They are pretty common where I am from (western Canada), my current house (1999) and previous house (1974) both had them. Not every house has its but it’s not really rare here.
Attic fans are great! It does sound like a plane taking off when you fire it up, but it cools off a house in minutes in the evening.
Fun Fact: Early limousines (with glass dividers) had acoustic speaking tubes so the passengers could give instructions to the chauffeur!
There are a number of additional features I've encountered in my homes: French drains (on the roof through the walls to the sewer stack in the basement), telephone niches, built-in telephone benches, milk delivery boxes, milk delivery cabinets with inner and outer doors and ventilation from the cellar to the roof, ice delivery cabinets, ice drain holes in kitchen or back porch floors, utility back porches, coal bins/hods, huge floor grates from the coal heating days, extensible laundry drying racks, built-in drain boards, shallow closets with only hooks, broom closets, sitz baths, water closets, scored plaster, sleeping porches, tacked down linoleum rugs in dining rooms, servant entrances complete with bench, etc. I've also seen every feature you have listed, thanks for putting them together!
Am I the only one who still uses an ironing board 🤣🤣 🤣
I love having an attic fan in our house. It really does a great job at circulating air and cooling down the house in the spring/ early summer.
Here is a fun tidbit, the currently being produced Fleming 55 yacht has a dumbwaiter from the main deck galley to the flying bridge, so they are still being installed today.
My childhood home was a custom house built in the 1950s. It had a laundry chute. Very civilized. If I were to design my own home, I'd definitely put one in.
Looked more like a spring house than a root cellar to me but maybe not. My grandparents had a summer kitchen attached to the house. Mounting block. Before electric fans, first floor draft could be created by burning gas piped up to a cupula with windows or other openings. It was like the draft produced by a chimney. This was popular in some of the great southern mansions.
I have a book on steam engineering and it describes this, either using a steam jet or a gas flame. The book was written as if electricity didn’t exist, and I suppose it was pretty experimental at the time (late 1800s).
@@dale116dot7 Wasn't aware that steam was used. I have seen it only once in situ.
I had an Attic fan installed in my.2 story shirtwaist, built in 1911, in 2004. Best thing I ever did. Really hot nights are few and no sky high electric bills.
We did not have a laundry chute growing up. However we did keep a snow shovel by the back door so I could shovel off the back steps and then shovel a path to the clothes line. And shovel out under the clothes line. That is almost as laundry efficient, right?
Wow there is a house near me where laundry is hung out on the coldest of days. Heavy stuff too. Jeans, hoodies, flannels. We used to shovel a path on the patio out to the grill. Used it all winter
My Mom had a collapsible clothes line she would tote out and put in a cemented in housing in the back yard. You could fit a WHOLE lot of laundry on that line and it smelled so good from fresh air and sunshine. After all was dry, she'd collapse it and bring it inside. She'd only use her dryer in an emergency but she also had wash lines strung in the basement so she could hang up clothes indoors. Nowadays we use the dryer ALWAYS. I don't even think outdoor wash lines are allowed in our subdivision unless they are fenced in so nobody can see them. Rather silly. But here in FL in summer it is so humid I don't think clothes would even dry outdoors. They'd probably just mildew.
@@virginiasoskin9082 When I met my husband I noticed his clothes always smelt so nice. They lived in a big old Victorian & the mom hung lines down in the basement when she couldn’t use the outdoor line.
Owning a big 70s home is the best. You'll find all the cool conveniences of the 70s like large rooms, tall ceilings and vaulted ceilings, sunken living rooms, full wall wood burning fireplaces, double door entrances, large entry halls, steel beam construction, open stairs, central vacuum, built in intercoms with music and built in speakers outside and in every room, built in refrigerators tile countertops with blender station, double ceramic sinks, built in double ovens, down draft stoves with grills, big jetted tubs, separate showers, lighted inground pool with cabana, power rooms off main entrances, finished walk out basements, patios, huge attached garage with lots of storage, wrap around driveway, big walk in closets, real alarm systems covering every window and exit door, real wooden cabinetry, large wet bar, pool table for entertaining. Ahhh guve me a 70s house over anything built before or after.
My husband’s 89 year old uncle worked for a vacuum cleaner company that installed those vacuum systems you mentioned. I forget what year he passed but he did it up until s few years before he died. He couldn’t take crawling around installing the things. It was within the last 20 years. Probably less.
Was the company Electrolux?
I really did enjoy this! I love old homes.