10 Old Home Features… That Have FADED Into History
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- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- Explore the fascinating world of historic old home features and architecture! Discover how features like icebox, picture rail, butler's pantry, milk doors and dumbwaiters added unique charm to the houses of yesteryear. Learn about the evolution of home heating from coal chutes and transom windows. See how knob and tube wiring, wash basins, and servant quarters tell a story of past lifestyles. Join us on a journey through the architectural history of houses, where each room, from the parlor to the pantry, reveals a piece of our heritage.
Part 2: • 10 Old Home Features T...
#home #house #architecture #nostalgia #retro
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If you could bring back one old feature into modern homes, what would it be?
Probably the dumb waiter. I'm old and falling apart at the seams, so having a small elevator to take clothes washing, and things like toiletries between floors, would be really helpful.
The milk door repurposed for today's grocery/food delivery needs would be a close second.
The dumb waiter. I could use it to move laundry from the bedrooms on the second floor to the laundry room on the lower level.
If you have enough room for it, I think butler's pantries are very useful and practical. I think even a small one can be really handy.
Transom windows. Functional and attractive.
I never thought about it since I’m a “boomer” and most of those conveniences were being replaced. I remember the coal bin but it was outside on the porch and it was pretty big. I wouldn’t have minded having an ice box but to use as a small wardrobe. So the ice box and dumb waiter and I think transom windows.
The concept behind Milk Doors could easily be updated for modern package delivery. Given the high rates of package theft in many areas, this seems like a feature that ought to make a comeback.
GREAT IDEA! I think some homes are being designed that way now.
When I was a child we had daily deliveries of milk. Rain or shine, winter or summer the milkman was a certainty. We didn’t have a milk door, however, if a person was wise they left a small pot (like a yoghurt pot) with the empties to cover the tops of the fresh milk to prevent the bluetits from pecking the tops to get at the milk.
@@katiefowle7543 I live in Texas where a ton of houses are being built every day and I have not seen one yet.. but it ALMOST be a great idea! Nowadays with the low IQ of America and people stealing everything, they need to make a built in safety storage with an alarm by the front door.
As a Messenger I saw many with coded locks or on some secure trap door setups. One I dealt with was for dinner clothing for pickup midafternoon for after work formal events.
Yeah,with a Steele door. I did time with the dog door burglar of Colorado Springs.
One of the things that disappeared was affordable housing prices.
Amen!! I am 80 and had to go back to work, just to pay rent & utilities
Part of the problem is the lot size requirements imposed by cities. Builders aren't going to build smaller, more affordable, homes if they can build large homes for more profit. They're not going to build a small house on a large lot that by itself is very expensive. The average size of a new house in 1950 was something like 1,200 square feet, now that has doubled. People need to lower expectations and learn to live with less, rather than trying to afford what used to be a mansion only for the super-rich.
The house I grew up in was a two bedroom bungalow. It cost $5,000 in 1950.
That's got a lot to do with the value of your money today vs what used to be worth. You can thank most all of our fearless leaders both past and present from both parties who were not afraid to spend spend spend much more money than the government took in as taxes and instead ran the printing press and borrowed that money from the Federal Reserve.
My great great grandfather built his home for $4,000 in 1901. The exterior material (limestone) was from his land. God, I wish I had the money to buy it and fix it up.
While sitting in a sweltering Chicago classroom, there was no better phrase to here than the teacher saying “Open the transom”! Small relief - but it was at least SOMETHING!!!
Here?
The sleeping porch is one I'd bring back.
we had one
Many older homes in Denmark have a very small pre entry room called a “wind catch”. It’s usually no more than 4x4 ft. and functions like an airlock: When entering the home, you close the outer door before opening the inner one to avoid letting in too much cold air in the winter.
Places that have a real winter often have an entry room as you describe. Common in Canada and the NE USA.
It's often called a 'mud room' in North America. Not even only in the north, sometimes you'll find one in less cold areas if they deal with a lot of outdoor messes.
We call that a porch in the uk.
In the US we call that a mud room
"Mud room" is a regional term. Not heard in NY, for instance. Basement rooms for cool food storage, etc, are often called mud rooms, in my experience
I'd love to see transom windows make a comeback. I think they look cool and they'd allow for light to pass thru into hallways.
Agree, transoms _are_ cool! My elementary school had them. There was long pole on a hook in the corner, so the teacher could use it to reach up and open or close the transoms.
Well, still have transom windows and picture rails in my home, which dates from the 1860's, plus there is a recess outside for the milkman to place milk as well.
You'd have to have more than the traditional modern 8 foot ceiling.
It's also a great way to save energy on the AC until it's really needed
I love our transom windows! In our Victorian house it really helps with light! I can’t imagine how dark it would be in here if we didn’t have those.
Butlers Pantry and Transom Windows were super nice features
I just learned about Chimney Cupboards when someone asked on Facebook “what’s this random framed out narrow hole in my wall”. Apparently it was common to have a small closet next to the chimney where the heat from the exposed bricks could keep things warm. Could be used for food, linens, etc
Transom windows are seriously in need of a comeback. I owned a home from 1897 that had a butler's pantry. The craftsmanship on the wood was really nice and gave me extra storage places for dry food stuff.
That was a plate warmer radiator in that butler’s pantry
Love a Butlers Pantry. Dear friend of mine bought a house in an upscale suburb in north Jersey. Views of NYC from her front door. Lots of old 30’s charm.
@flash ... butlers pantry ... sounds super cool.
Transom windows tend to feed oxygen to house fires.
That's why newer building codes forbids them.
@@johanvangelderen6715 That makes sense. Like laundry chutes
We live in a Victorian home and have transom windows and a parlor room. We also have a butlers pantry. I didn’t even know what it was when we moved in a year and a half ago. The detail in this house on the woodwork is amazing! I still can’t get over it. I sometimes have to stop and admire it still.
Bet the heating/cooling and wiring is a downside though.
So glad to hear you love your place so much 🥰 (when most people tend to not pay much attention to details anymore) Sounds really wonderful! I love the houses built in the past, they have extra charm and functionality. I think many of the old features should be brought back, they still make so much sense
Your house sounds lovely. My old apartment had a butler's pantry.
@@ericeandco Wiring doesn't need to be an issue if you are/know someone who is handy and take time. The best way to stay warm is to dress and eat warm. ;) Large open spaces, a lot of stone and possibly trees around the property keep Victorian houses cool in summer. Many things that seem uncomfortable or problematic don't need to be, if you change your approach a little :)
I am downright jealous. I LOVE those older homes. They are usually better built than TEN or TWENTY 'new' homes!!!!
A butler's pantry sounds like a dream come true for those of us with limited storage.
Agree!!! And when I see remuddles gutting kitchen cabinets out and replacing with small open shelves i think it's a place for HGTV looks, not functional.
@@finalvoyage35totally agree!!
#11: A mother AND a father, in the same house, at the same time. I miss the good old days.
@@purplesprigs I guess yours weren’t yelling and screaming at each other then 🤣🤣🤣. My Dad should have divorced the bitch who birthed us and taken us away so we might have had a decent life.
Fun fact related to coal chutes: A family in the 80s, if I recall, stared receiving a phone call every hour during the days to their home phone, for weeks on end, with always just static and silence on the other end. They wondered if it was some kind of harassment, but after a long investigation, it turned out some local fuel company staff had added an old auto-dial machine to a customer’s home fuel tank, set to dial the fuel company number when the fuel level ran low. It was eventually triggered, but by that time, the fuel company was no longer in business and the number had been reassigned to the family. So the calls were made by the machine when the level in someone’s basement became low.
That is such a Good Piece Of History Thank You Much.. The ww2 fighter pilots would give there engine throttle and Say Pour on the Coal" Very Amusing...LOL Have a Good Day
@@dancingtrout6719 WW2 fighter pilots also knew the difference between there and their, imagine that!
Linguistics isn't about perfection, it's about understanding. @@Anvilshock
@@Anvilshock It is a perfectly nice, relevant and understandable comment. And I can’t say all of those are true of yours.
@@callmeonkeshiasphone Actually, linguistics isn't about perfection at all. I suggest you learn what the smart words you're trying to use actually mean. Helps with not embarrassing yourself.
You forgot the razor blade disposal slot, a slot in the ablutions room, which is basically a wall cavity you couldn't empty.
and when people redo homes, to this day, SURPRISE! Rusty blades!
Never seen those outside of Holiday Inns.
@@UguysRnuts When I was a kid, I saw those slots a lot. But, I haven't seen that slot in probably 40 years now.
We've got these in both of our bathrooms, noticed them when we moved in
@@YoursTrulyMrsMoores Do you know (approximately) what year your place was built?
I'm wondering if this slots were popular through say, the 1960s, then fell out of style?
My grandfather was a milkman, and my family continued to receive milk deliveries until I was about five (I'm 57 now). We did not have a "milk door," however; we had an insulated bin on the front porch. The milkman would deliver the milk in glass bottles and place them in the milk bin; we would leave the empty bottles in the bin for him to pick up.
How many kids did your granddad have?
@@1_star_reviews Five.
Same here. We had a tin like insulated box on our front porch. The milk came in bottles with cardboard tabs for tops
Yeah we had milk delivery until about 1988
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I’m in my sixties. My dad called the refrigerator “the icebox” till he died in 2011. When he was a kid in the 1920s and 30s, they had an icebox. We always had an ice pick in the house though when I was little we used it when “defrosting” the fridge as they were not self defrosting. The freezer would build up ice and you had to periodically thaw and chop it out. But in my dads day the ice pick was for the icebox. My elderly cousin (my dads first cousin) also told us about the death door. They used to play in it. But if was for removing a body after the wake (which would be in the home). We had a mailbox not a door but we had milk and bread delivered. So much of this stuff is only a few generations old. Talk to your elders people! They lived what is history to you
Can you explain more about the death door? Where would it have been located? Did it open to the street? Did most houses of the time have them? I've never heard of this before!
When I was a child my parents always said Ice box until I heard the word refrigerator and wondered why they then called it an ice box!
Fun Fact about Parlors: The reason why we call them "Living Rooms" now instead of just keeping the name "Parlor" was because the Parlor was often where wakes were held when someone passed away. But after the scarlet fever epidemic that took many children's lives, the term Parlor became synonymous with death, especially of children. So people stopped calling it something related to death, and started calling it the "Living Room." We also stopped holding wakes in houses about that same time.
yeah. my Grandfather said when he felt like he was about to die, he went into the Living Room........and recovered!
It's interesting since I'm more familiar with the word being paired like "ice cream parlor", "pizza parlor", "massage parlour", etc. I guess with those, the association with death wasn't as much of a connection as having a room at home that can be used for wakes.
My family had wakes in their “parlor” in the south when my mother was growing up. I’m glad they stopped doing that. Lolol I guess someone had the bright idea to create their own parlor to rent out to people thus the funeral parlor. What you said truly makes a lot of sense.
@@JLCL01 Also funeral parlor, lol
lol, oh really? Then what are they called......when there is BOTH in a house?
As a kid, the arrival of the milkman was always fun. The glass bottles were gold tops and blue tops, blue tops were standard milk, gold tops were extra creamy, the top inch or 2 was like cream. We fought over that one.
Was milk delivery a free service?
@1hinita no. The milk was delivered in a 6-pack wire basket. The night before, our parents would put the basket back outside on the porch with the now empty bottles. Also tucked into the basket was the money for the next milk. So the milkman would take the used basket and swap with a fresh basket with more milk. I think there was also a note detailing what milk we wanted.
I was born in 1971, I barely remember fresh milk delivery. We had a shelf in our breezeway. Oh the memories....
For some time, we'd find the milk bottle tops with a hole in them, and the milk, in fact more often the cream, somewhat depleted. Turns out that the hungry/thirsty or just curious magpies used their strong beaks, to help them enjoy a drink of milk.
From an Aussie.
Wow, you are dating yourself. That said. We used to get milk and cheese. One of my jobs was to make sure to catch the milkman to let them know of order changes.
The house I grew up in was an old Victorian mansion built in 1899, and I remember it still having most of these features, plus some that weren't covered here. Our house had a laundry chute that was really handy, and it also had the remains of an old servant call system, called an annunciator. The panel and all the call buttons were still there, but it didn't function. I believe it was originally connected to an old battery that was long gone. My favorite thing, though, and I don't know if these were actually original to the house or not, were these spare beds that lowered down out of the ceiling via a crank on the wall. I have never seen anything like them in another house. Mine and my 3 siblings' bedrooms all had them, and we used them when we had friends over to spend the night. When I was in high school, I would use the one in my room to hide things I wasn't supposed to have, like cigarettes, pot, nudie magazines, etc. 😅
I think the beds you described are Murphy Beds
I was slightly disappointed laundry chutes were not on the list.
@@kimdrevas4984 - Murphy beds were the ones that folded up into the wall. The one that was hoisted to the ceiling was patented as the Sorlien bed.
Most interesting !
@@lonniemcclure4538My grandpa's house had one. It wasn't an especially old one, I don't think, but it was cleverly built into the counter between the double sinks as if opening a cupboard.
He was a civil engineer, so it suited him. My parents and I also rented a beach house some time ago with a laundry chute. Oh, my little sister had a ball; she was about 5 at the time and loved opening up the lid to throw clothes down. My current home has the laundry on the top floor, unfortunately.
I’m 72 years old. When I was a small child, my family had an icebox. It never needed repair.
My home was built in 1890 and i still have knob and tube wiring, a milk door, coal chute and all kind of yesteryear crap. Love it
I would rethink the knob and tube wiring if that's still being used. Big old fire hazard!
the knob wiring really need to go man
You need to change your wiring please
Everybody commenting about knob and tube is making a knee jerk comment. You haven't personally assessed his system. Original knob and tube systems are quite safe. It's the later homeowner hacks that are the problem. The fact that his house is still there is testament that not all knob and is bad. I would be more concerned with later aluminum wire and federal pacific panels than knob and tube and fuses.
@cgschow1971 no there is no reason to live in a house with that. So dangerous no matter the shape it's in.
We had transom windows in school. I spent my entire school days in schools without AC, and didn't notice. The combination of high ceillings, transom windows, and open outside windows kept the rooms comfortable. Even today the proper use of double hung windows can keep our houses cool, but the lower ceiling height negates the effect quite a bit.
Did you go to MY school?!?!? If you are as old as me….as far as school building s with AC…well…you don’t miss what you never had.
It also helps to have people with experience & wisdom, paying attention and around to do it, open and close the windows to the outside, as the temps &/or humidity out there makes sense to. Shade trees well located as well as the placement of rooms in the house, windows and even where the garage is. Here in west central Wisconsin, it's my preference to use the garage to block the prevailing NW winds for winter esp. , and also serving to block the late afternoon sun & heat. Have a porch from which to watch the sunset. Have the attached garage open up right into the kitchen - almost. Have a small entryway/amenities, and maybe laundry &/or bathroom there, and door to back yard, so, if gardening or have livestock, can come right in to that when dirty. Pantry near that end of kitchen & door to cellar, for groceries and garden produce to have a direct, short path... ( if no old-fashioned outside door down cellar !). Have master bedroom in coolest corner ( for summer) in house, so Dads/Husbands, who tend to run hot, can sleep with the least amount of fans and AC needed, when the rest of the family is fine without them (or turned lower).
I'm from a dairy farm, and I garden & want to get animals again ;).
Ha, Simon's Cat must live in an older building, then! Transom windows play a role in some of those cute little cartoons.
low ceiling heights are an absolute curse. Builders just trying to save a few pennies.
So many practical house features got eliminated by post-WWII modernity.
I was born shortly after WWII and most of these shared items were part of my early childhood in the eastern United States.Thank you.
Parlors were used for wakes and home funerals, and it changed how people viewed the room. The term “living room” changed the view of that room.
What I miss is the formality of houses at that time. Homes are typically open concept now and many of these features would not fit modern houses. I still prefer houses where there were many rooms. They just lent themselves to more privacy and a more structured way of living. When dinner was in the dining room, the meal was an event.
I hate open floorplans. My current house (built 2005) has a closed plan and it is nice. The one "open" area is a counter bar that flows from the kitchen to the living room. But other than that, you can't see one room from another.
I agree, open floor plans are ugly and boring. Give me an older house anytime ( with modern updates). I love moldings and real wood floors and windows ( hate this vinyl proliferation).
Open concept does not feel warm and cozy, many rooms do.
I like an open plan in kitchen/ dining room and family room.
I am a creature that enjoys hanging out in the kitchen.
Otherwise I prefer, having many small rooms each with a purpose.
Although if I had a library I’d want that to be big and open.
open floor plan is just cheaper to build. low cost construction , no need to spend money on walls and doors and they charge you more !!
Another thing that could've been mentioned is built-in laundry chutes. As a youngster, the neighborhood I lived in was all homes built from around 1920 through the '40s. My house (and most of my friends') had a little door in a hallway on each level that opened to a sheet-metal shaft, probably around 16 x 16 inches in size, built into the wall and dropping straight down into the basement where the washing and drying machines were. They weren't dumb waiters because there was no lift system, just an empty, open-bottomed, vertical shaft. We kids couldn't be made to stop using the laundry chute as a play thing (dropping army men and who knows what else down it) and, afraid for our safety, my parents ended up nailing the doors shut. ☹ That house also had picture rails and many in that neighborhood had the built-in milk delivery boxes. By my time, though, they were no longer in use and had been sealed up.
I lived in the four unit condominium when I was a kid in the mid-1960s. Each unit had its own basement, with a laundry chute connecting the two. The condos were built the year before we moved in. So I guess that was an older feature they decided to include in the building’s architecture.
Yeh, laundry chures re great & should be revived.
we see one of those laundry shutes in Home Alone 1
Open laundry chutes like that were banned because they are an extreme fire hazard
I was thinking the same thing. I sure wish I had one! Carrying laundry from the second floor to the basement is not easy. They don't allow them anymore because they say they are a fire hazard.
My grandparent's home in central PA had a coal chute, a shower head and simple toilet in their basement, with no walls for privacy. There was a sun porch with radiant flooring underneath. There were 2 sleeping porches on the back of the house on the 2nd floor. And the attic was reached with a stairway inside a closet, not a drop-down ladder or trap door entry. I think it was built in the 1880s or 1890s. It was a well loved home!
i have 3 of these old home features in my apartment, a milk door, knob and tube wiring, and picture rail. the apartment was built in 1924, and i chose it for its charming elegance, although it’s a bit of a fixer upper. i could never fathom living in a modern box house 😢
Oh I bet your place is loaded with character.
well, most of us sadly don't have a choice, we have to take a "box house" or be homeless.
Can you imagine how handy it would be as a renter to have a picture rail? I feel that if we all could hang wall art without worrying about damaging property, we'd be more likely to stay in the same place because it would feel like home.
We could potentially inprove this too.
Imagine if the picture rail had threaded screw slots on it.
Having screw slots on the wall itself could be pretty cool too. But I think many people would dislike that look.
@@Spencer-wc6ew maybe there could be faceplates that look finished to cover the screwholes?
Rail to hang your TV from so they don't fall off.
Mine is mounted to the wall but a friends was sitting and then it wasn't
I hated my last apartment because I could only paint it antique white. Landlords need to realize that people want to make a rental feel like a home and consider paint and spackling the walls as part of the job
I've seen at least one rental house for students having picture rails, though they were more simple, just straight wooden batten that you could screw onto - screwing onto the plastered wall was strictly forbidden.
Dumbwaiters, even if mechanical, are still as practical today as then. It's a lot safer than trying to carry something large or heavy up a flight (or more) of stairs, so I think they should be brought back as a standard feature in homes with multiple stories.
I live in a 2nd floor apartment, and since I broke my leg last year, I'd dearly love to have a dumbwaiter!
Me too!
& laundry shoots.
The problem is that they are fire hazards. That's the reason why laundry chutes stopped being a thing. If a fire breaks out the laundry chutes make air passages that spread the fire quicker, especially one that's in a centralized location for easy access.
I imagine that a dumbwaiter wouldn't be as problematic considering there would only be one, and the dumbwaiter itself would possibly block airflow depending on what floor it is on.
But quite frankly, I would rather just have a closet-sized elevator. We had one in our old home. Technically it was not rated for human passengers, but we often used it that way anyway. It was fantastic for older people or anyone with difficulty walking, and when you sent supplies up or down you could fill in a lot more boxes than a dumbwaiter.
@@marscaleb You could use a dumbwaiter or larger elevator to transport a laundry basket anyway, so that could double as a laundry shoot without the airflow issue. It'd be especially useful in a house with the laundry room built near one of the dumbwaiter's access points. That way you could run the basket right down next to the washer and dryer and then back up after the clothes are done.
When my Grandfather began work, he did carving and styling of iceboxes. I have an oak one in my bedroom, used for sweaters and fragile items. Lovely pieces of furniture, some kept in parlors to be admired.
There were 11 children in mom’s family and my auntie inherited the house. There was a parlor that we kids called “The Quiet Room.” It was usually closed up but she would let us go in there and play. Beautiful hardwood floors and beautiful furniture plus an old record player that played 78 records. We grew up with Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis etc. great upbringing. Good memories 😢
My grandfather was one of those "milk thieves". At the age of eight, he was orphaned when his last parent passed away. Forced to live on the streets because nobody would take him in, he resorted to stealing milk and other food items in order to survive. An aunt who lived on the mountain in the next county eventually took him in and raised him.
Ty, for your Aunt. I hope they live good lives and she treated him well. God Bless. 🙏
Wow. Poor boy.
Back in the old days, people wouldn't take in orphans, out of compassion, orphans had to pay their own way. Young boys would be taken in to do chores. Everyone worked, everyone carried their own weight. Young orphan girls were taught how to run a house, how to cook and clean. Boys worked in the fields, pulling cotton, tending crops, feeding animals on a farm. By the time girls turned 15, they were trained to make good wives and mothers. Boys by 15 could plow, bale hay, raise crops, break horses. In the South, tobacco, cotton and corn required special skills that only young, strong men could bring into focus.
It breaks my heart to think of a little one all alone, with no parents. People these days are so into caring for pets, and noone spends one second to think about people.
That's a story too common of that era. 😭
My mother, born in 1913, used the term icebox and refrigerator interchangeably. When I went to college, the dorm rooms all had picture rails so that we students wouldn't damage the walls by making holes.
If you watch The Flintstones cartoons which were made in the 60s they always referred to the fridge as the ice box. When I was a kid I always wondered why they called it that since I had never heard it called that anywhere else.
I actually have a circa-1910s ice box. It's been restored and refinished and we use it to store china and silverware.
My Mother (born 1919) called them ice boxes mostly. She and her sisters loved it when the ice man came around on hot days 😊
I still occasionally use the term. It’s easier for me to say 😂😉
@@grayrabbit2211 Great idea.
I call them ice boxes today - refrigerator is a pretentious word the first people to get them insisted on using to show they were above those with a mere icebox. Not sure how a 5 syllable word ever caught on. Join me in refusing to use it!
My house was built as a school in 1870 and converted to a Craftsman style home in 1915. I have the transoms, picture rails, butler's pantry and parlor. I love it all!
Very educational video! As someone who loves architecture and history, this was very fascinating! And know I know what that large sqaure metal cast iron door I discovered on an house we painted was used for. It was an coal shoot and makes sense as the house was built in the time period coal was commonly used to heat homes.
I don't think I've ever seen a house with a coal chute, very cool!
I owned a 1905 Sears and Roebuck home in Iowa that had the original milk door still intact in the back on the summer porch. When we remodeled the outside, we made sure to keep the milk door intact. I’m so glad we decide to save that little piece of history.
History is IMPORTANT. Am so glad that you kept that bit of the past Alive and Well.
Sears & Roebuck houses were just 'the cat's pajamas' up 'til they stopped selling them in the 1940's.
I'm sorry to hear that you "remodeled the outside" -
@@karenjohannessen8987 we simple repaired the siding and replaced some windows. We kept everything original. Even the paint color. And restored all the original woodwork inside. Which was absolutely amazing Unfortunately we had to sale and return to Texas. Broke my heart. I can only hope the couple we sold to kept it the same
Anytime a person can save anything old and historic while remodeling an old house is wonderful! Glad you did that!
Gold Bell gift stamps and books
I live in the most common British housing stock, Victorian terrace, but have kept all original features; that means I don’t need air conditioning even in the hottest summer, and in the winter we light the fires in our bedrooms. I love my home; it’s perfect.
Cool! What a unique option!
Sounds wonderful! How cool does it stay in summers?
@@laurieb3703 you need to open all the transoms, dampers and top and tail the sashes in all the rooms (just enough to create air flow), that creates enough draught to comfortably change the air, however if you go to the bottom of the stairs, there’s an icy blast that could nearly knock you off your feet - perfect for a quick cool down.
@@catherinerobilliard7662 where does the cold air come from??? the basement?
@@danf4447what basements? They were only in large houses. Kitchens and larders and coal stores were in basements.
The dumbwaiter and milk doors are awesome. Dumbwaiters were used not only to transport meals, but also for moving furniture and for laundry. Up until the 1950's, the laundry, especially in large homes, was washed in the basement and dried in the attic, then ironed and taken and put away. It was major work. And it all had to stay hidden from prying eyes if you lived in a city or a big home. :) You can learn a lot by touring old homes! When I was a child, we lived in a few very old homes that had clothes chutes that went to the basement for laundry, butler's pantries, servant's bathrooms, coal chutes. They're still around. :) Great video.
They were too small for furniture. Not all were motorized. Pulling them up can be tiring.
We had transom windows at school. We had a living room at home that functioned like a parlor with no tv. We had a piano and pump organ with a sofa and chairs. This room was usually used on Sunday and special occasions and holidays. I also remember coal furnaces until Highschool. We like to watch it being shoveled before school. I really enjoyed this . Thank you.
I remember being a kid growing up in the suburbs of Denver (early ‘80s) and I had some cousins who lived downtown in an old Victorian. It had all of the features mentioned herein, plus a bunch of secret staircases between the walls that we kids would often use to sneak up on the grownups and each other. I suppose those were originally intended for the servants.
Yep. The narrowness of the servants' stairs was a prime reason for inventing the dumb waiter.
What suburb? I have cousins in Aurora CO.
@@diane1390 It was the southern part of Aurora (early ‘80s) which puts it in the central Aurora of today.
When my grandmother was a small child, her parents operated a speak easy in Chicago. Whenever the police would show up, my grandmother would get into the dumbwaiter with the booze, someone would lift it up so it was in between floors then my grandmother would wedge it so it wouldn't budge. If they asked, the police were told that it was broken and didn't work. When they would try to lower or raise it, it be firmly stuck.
Wow! That's a great memory!
Thanks for sharing it 😃
Could you imagine being the young generation that grew up when pluming and drainage in homes was the newest thing. That was probably more life changing for society than the internet was.
My house was built in 1920 and has a coal chute and the remnants of a transom window. The window was filled in and painted over when an addition was built onto the house in 1935. That door, which was the back door to the house, is now the doorway from the kitchen to the mud room
There is still a functioning dumbwaiter in the apartment where my mom grew up, which was probably built in the 1920s. Don't recall if it was manual or electric. My mom told me she grew up on the fourth floor and the building didn't have elevators, so when my grandmother went grocery shopping, the dumbwaiter was a big relief; she wouldn't have to lug all those bags up four flights of stairs.
My first home was large 2 story with a basement that was built in the 1880s in Colorado Springs and we paid the princely sum of $16,000 in 1975. We had the parlor that could be closed off by a set of pocket doors. All windows in the house were leaded glass. All the rooms had ridiculously high ceilings with the picture rails.The wiring was still the knob and tube style. We not only had the coal chute, but still had the "iron octopus" furnace, but that had been converted to natural gas. There was a formal dining room separated from the kitchen by a pass thru butlers pantry and could be closed off by french doors. The single bathroom upstairs had the original clawfoot bathtub and the wooden high tank with pull chain toilet. It was definitely an upper class home of it's day and sometimes it felt like living in a museum. The icing on the cake was that the home was in perfect condition and needed no repairs when we moved in.
Young millennial here, my home was built in 1905 and I keep a parlor/library in my home. No tv are allowed in there. Simply conversation or reading space.
❤
Who the hell still has a TV?
I rarely watch TV to honest and I'm a 'youngling'
I love that
@@augustinesim1672same here (2006) TV just feels manipulative or too loud
My old house has a spot for an old Murphy bed. I saw one old house with picture rails at the Heritage Park in Pasadena, CA. Another old feature I remember at my grandfathers place was a hand lever at the top of the stairs you could pull that opened the front door by cable. Worked great.
My sister's house, built in the 40s on the side of Mt. Davidson in San Francisco, had an interesting feature. Because it was 4 levels, it had a central vacuum cleaner on one floor, and air vents to each room in the house. All you had to lug around was the brush and suction hose, which was plugged into the vent in the wall. Made cleaning much more convenient.
The homes on my street were all built in the 70’s. They all had the central vac system. Even in the garage to vacuum out your car.
Central vac’s are still a thing.
Central Vac systems are still an option in new homes for people who want them.
What? Thats amazing. Never heard of that
Central vacs are still a thing. Usually the seal on one of the connections fails and instead of fixing it people just give up and buy a vacuum cleaner.
I really like the transom windows, dumb waiters, picture rails, and the butler's pantry. I'd like to see those in newly built homes.
I concur 100%. The other features while nice, are not of critical import.
Our home was built less than 5 years ago and it has a butler’s pantry. 👍
I've seen Butler's Pantries in some modern homes.
Also the chute that goes from bathroom to laundry room. My daughter has it in her house
I would love a dumbwaiter would help so much with cleaning a two story home.
I own the home I grew up in, which belonged to my great-grandparents. It has a parlor, complete with the original furniture and piano, and is off the living room. We also have a walled off space next to the furnace which my mom always called the cistern. There was never any water in it, though. Now I am wondering if it was for coal, since I know there used to be a coal burning furnace in the cellar. This was very interesting!
My apartment building was built in 1927 and has milk doors, picture rails, and built-in ironing boards. I love living here.
My daughter lives in a old apartment building in Michigan. The central hallways still have the milk doors, but plastered over on the inside of the apartment. Her unit still has picture rails in her living and dining room, a phone niche, and a built in ironing board.
Is it a phone niche, or a place for a statue of the Virgin Mary (common in Catholic areas)..
Early phones (crank) were most often wall mounted.
I had a built in china cabinet where I kept all my dishes. I loved it as it was built into a shelf that was between the kitchen and the small eating nook.
Did you walk around your apartment with an E.V.P thing at 3am???? 😬
@@graybeard2113they also had table phones 😊
One cool thing I discovered in an old home (I’m a plumber) is one of the first natural gas clothes dryer. It wasn’t a tumble dryer like today, you actually hung your clothes in a gas fired ‘closet’!
It’s still a thing in Sweden, but they switched to electric operation- it is very useful and not damaging the clothes like a tumble dryer…
OMG!
Wow I’d love to have seen it. 😊
@@barbarachippel3142 W. E. Lamneck from Columbus Ohio made these around 1925. I found a UA-cam video on Broad and high channel. They called it a Laundry dryer. Hope this helps a little.
@@barbarachippel3142 it was built in 1925 in Columbus ohio. It is called a “laundry dryer”
I found out that the recessed area in the hallway wall wasn’t intended as a bookshelf, but was the space for the phone! Maybe you can include that if you choose to do a follow-up video on this topic 😊
I've lived in several houses and apartments with the phone alcove, and actually used it with a rotary dial phone, back in the day. Bet it makes a handy little bookshelf or for knickknack though!
I remember homes had that for Virgin Mary statues.
My cousin used to own a house filled with crawlspaces and weird two foot tall rooms with windows in them. We called them Monster Houses, because most of them were very dark service or storage spots, but the two rooms with actual windows became our little hidey-holes as kids. I miss those so much, and I’m putting monster houses in my dream house for my kids to enjoy :)
The change from parlor to livingroom also has roots in the change of the funeral industry. When it cost more money to have hour loved one laid out in a funeral parlor, that became a status symbol. You could afford someone else to take care of it and hold viewings there and so the room was only used for living people, hence the living room.
The real estate agents factored in here. What was once called the "parlor" had bad connotations with death. Now that funeral parlors were remote, realtors rebranded the parlor as the "living room", specifically to disassociate the two terms. Pretty slick imo
@@jamescrowley2733good little factoid 👍
Some people called those rooms , “drawing rooms”, because you withdrew from the dinning room after a meal.
Showing complete disrespect for our loved one’s same with not burying our loved ones on our family property.
I have been wondering why they’re called “living rooms.” We live in all our rooms, don’t we?
Parlors also had beautiful double pocket doors that operated as smooth as silk and were fine grained lumber.
When my dad built our (last) house 60 years ago, he put pocket doors between the dining room/living room and the hallway to the bedrooms. He put another one between the dining room/living room and the kitchen. They were great! We also had a laundry chute, a downstairs "play room", a separate downstairs laundry room/sewing room, and a separate "work room" where my dad had a big, old, red stove where he burned scarp wood. He cut up pallets for fire wood. When he died, my mom had 2 1/2 years worth of fire wood to heat the house. I miss that place.
I had pocket doors. They would come off the hinges and were difficult to get back on.
My family’s lived in what used to be an old farmhouse for three generations now (over 50 years)! We have SO many old things. A lot of our furniture belonged to my grandpa’s parents and are at least 80+ years old at this point. We have an ice box by our entryway, and since it’s always been there, I didn’t think anything of it as a kid; I always thought it was a cabinet. When I found out it was an old ice box I thought it was so cool! After that I began to notice the other antiques we have even more. My grandparents used these old-fashioned potbelly stoves for bedside tables, and I never even noticed before that!
Point is, antiquities like these are awesome! It’s sad that so many things have been lost to time or replaced with something better, but it just makes looking back on what used to be standard even better! It’s amazing seeing how far we’ve come!
The house we lived in when I was a teen had a milk chute, coal chute, butlers pantry and a laundry chute. It also had stamped brick and a huge cedar closet in the attic as well as lead glass windows. Definitely my most favorite home.
Growing up in older homes in Detroit, we always had a milk door. We’d use it to store our spare key, and there were times we’d just slide ourselves through it if we got locked out. I can definitely see the benefit of it now with the amount of deliveries we receive. We also had foyers that had double doors and would block the outside cold from getting to the rest of the house
I remember my mother having to shove me through a milk chute after getting locked out of the house, lol.
I’m just outside detroit and our house has bricked over milk door. Also lived in a cool flat in ferndale where the basement had stained walls and closed up coal chutes on each corner, one for each of the 4 flats. It had the most beautiful oak floors, tall mouldings, and the bath and kitchen fixtures were original beautiful workmanship
Same here! Growing up on the west side almost all of the homes in our neighborhood had milk doors, coal chutes, laundry chutes, and the like. I remember one of my friend's houses had servants' quarters and even a separate staircase to the kitchen. I've always loved the charm of old homes, I hope we can keep some of these things alive if even just for aesthetics.
Like a dog door
Detroit has some fabulous old homes.
Over the years I've lived in several older homes that had bulk bins in the kitchens. Generally, they would hold about 50 lbs. These bins were built into the kitchen cabinets and usually lined with tin (to keep rats and mice away). They were meant to store flour, sugar, cornmeal, beans, or any other dry goods the family used a lot of.
My granny had one for flour, in the house my grandpa built. Back in the day, a man could build his own home without being restricted by government. I live in Mexico now and have built 2 apartments and 2 houses without so much as a building permit or an architectural drawing! Supposed to buy a permit, but I'm way out in the country & covid closed down every office.
The US government is choking the people of America to death in its stranglehold of greed & lust for power.
While I don't have bulk bins, I use old cappuccino cans for that stuff.
I'm tempted to build a pantry with a couple of bulk bins.
Still have one in my kitchen 😅
The house we grew up in (built in 1906) had a sugar bin in the kitchen built into the lower cupboards. Opening the door swung the quarter-circle
metal bin out so you could scoop out the amount needed. When I was a little girl I would hide in the inside corner and pull the bin shut.
We called it the 'sugar bin' but it probably was originally used for flour storage, back when every housewife baked her own bread.
Very interesting and well-presented, well organized bit of history!
The home theater room going to be part of this list pretty soon. I first learned about it from my father's magazines from the late 70s and 80s. There are new homes which still build theater rooms but I reckon it is more like a childhood dream/want than something really useful. By the way, the library already gone.
My friends moms Victorian home had lots of cool historic features.
Both he and his mom were really into the history of it. I thought it was pretty amazing myself.
Even though it had been renovated, and modernized they kept everything original and utilized it if possible.
The garage was originally a stable and had 2 horse stalls, and even some equipment for a horse drawn carriage, that was 100 years old. The doors were the original doors.
The home had the largest fireplace in the kitchen I have ever seen. 3 adults could sit inside. It was not functioning and held plants, and the dogs bed.
There were 3 other working fireplaces in the home. In the parlor/living room, and one in each of the 2 bedrooms. There had been more but they were filled in.
Every doorway had the window above, for light and air.
There were places designated for lanterns or candles in the walls. There was an oil lantern, original to the house still in its place on the fancy staircase. It was decor and did not work.
It had milk doors, both in the front and the back.
2 staircases, one hidden, very basic and one fancy with a beautiful iron and oak railing.
The hidden stair case was behind the built in ice box; it led to the servants quarters on the 3rd floor, it was the only way to get to those rooms. We were allowed to smoke in those rooms, because the smell stayed in that area, and didn’t permeate the rest of the house. Nice in winter, to not have to go outside.
They used it for medicine that needed to be stored in a cool dry place.
All the rooms had a window over the doors. Lots of stained lead glass. All original.
The pocket doors made the rooms twice as big or smaller.
The music room was originally a conservatory off the kitchen, with planters that still grew mint and parsley.. my friends said the plants were really old and they always forgot about them but they always grew in every Spring.
We had a lot of fun in that house.
There were so many details I don’t remember.
I don’t even know if he still lives there.
He loved the home and so did his mom so I cant imagine they would sell it.
We lived in a big house with a wrap-around porch when I was a kid. We weren't rich. It had a parlor and a living room. It had a big kitchen with a breakfast nook. It had a bathroom upstairs with a footed bathtub. There was a hidden door in the hall up there. It hid a staircase. But it just led down to the laundry room.
Sounds like a magical house to grow up in!
My Grandmother's house was a 3 story Victorian house of clapboard painted exterior built in the late 1800s. It had all the features in this video except a dumb waiter. Every room originally had a small fireplace that had been sealed with bricks that were faced with decorative tiles once central coal heating was installed. She had 11 children and 20 grandchildren. We all met there on Christmas night for cookies and hot chocolate. It had a front stairway and a rear stairway to the second floor, which had a single stairway to the 3rd floor. After her death @89 yro, a wonderful family bought it and maintained it with improvements like insulation. The 3 car garage had formerly been a carriage house.
You're very lucky! There was a fireplace in my grandma's second living room but we never used it.
I considered it a great loss when we the fire took it (electrical) but they did have the fireplace like little broom and everything. It was a flagstone looking fireplace I really liked it even if we never used it
7924 What precious memories you have of your Grandmother, she was a very resilient person to take care of that huge Victorian Home and raise 11 children.
I bet it was cold and drafty for most of the winter. We had a 100 year old victorian and most of the insulation (plant based back in the day) was laying on the basement floor. The rest of it disintegrated. The furnace never could keep up with the four floors (including the basement which was partly above ground and each floor was 12 feet from floor to ceiling. The windows were original single pain glass. Until we renovated, there was ice on the inside part of the windows and sometimes with below zero temps a thin layer of ice would form on the kitchen floor from the condensation in the house. We replaced all 34 windows and put in a hot water tank, which the house never had any then we moved. Not worth the investment.
I always loved a back stairway. My great aunts house had one. Lots of fun for us kids.
I have a house that was an old Steel Mill worker's house from the steel plant nearby, It was built in the mid 20's and had a fireplace in every room but the bathroom. TBH if it wasn't such a massive undertaking, I probably would've removed them as being sealed, they're more trouble than they're worth. When it comes time to replace the roof, I'm eliminating the chimneys because they serve no purpose other than being a failure point for a leak to begin. I added an attic and some of the bricks have deteriorated for whatever reason, so it'll probably be safer in the long run as it no longer has a purpose. My house growing up used the old chimney as an exhaust for the Buick sized furnace that was in there, but this house does not. I kinda wish there was a milk door though because I would've found a way to repurpose it as a delivery door.
My house was built in 1960. It has a milk door and laundry shute. I lived in some of those 0ld Victorian mansions as a child. Love them!
Loved our transom windows!!! Thanks for sharing.
I wonder if the milk door is ready for an updated revival, maybe call it an Amazon Door? Useful way to get packages delivered without risking porch thieves. Also, I'd love to see picture rails make a comeback--damned useful in my opinion. I've still got framed art we haven't hung because it's tough to find a spot that isn't just drywall, that also looks good.
It’s a neat idea, but doesn’t it make more sense to call it a Delivery Door or Package Door? Not only because, well, Amazon definitely isn’t the only delivery service, but also because Amazon clearly didn’t invent these things.
I noticed someone using their old milk door as a package door the other day, and I have several friends with picture rails in their apartments because they're plaster & lath construction. This is the SF Bay area, btw.
Good idea
Wall Dawgs are amazing screws to hang a heavy thing into just drywall. They have a bigger thread and are made to hold anything and everything.
My god man, do you hear yourself? Is your corporate brainwashing complete? Yeah, let's NOT start naming common objects after corporations. Seriously, just call it a "package door".
I still call it an ice box. Loved the ice man truck with beautiful ice. Transoms are still effective used along with AC and can save you money on your utility bill.
I still call it an ice box, too. It confuses my grandchildren, however. When I ask them to put an item in the ice box, it usually gets put in the freezer compartment. Lol
where did the melted water go from 100 lbs of ice??
I am old and clearly remember several of these ‘forgotten’ items. The coal chute is something I would not want back!
What beauty! Almost every one of these pictures of yesteryear is so easy on the eyes!
We need to bring most of these back with similar or updated purposes to suit our current needs.
Milk delivery is amazing, I'm in the UK and it's still a thing here. LOVE IT. Had to make a little box to keep the milk that sits outside as we don't live in a home with a milk door, would be an amazing feature. Dumbwaiters, laundry shoots, butler's pantries and milk doors should all come back!
In our shop is a grey-blue box about 2' x3' x3' with a slanting top and a lock. Has an interior tray. We use it for electrical parts now, but my Dad (b.1917) told me it was a dairy chest that was used to hold the early morning deliveries to the small stores. It sat outside and the deliverymand and the owner both had keys.
We had an insulated box supplied by the dairy. It was insulated to keep the milk from freezing in winter and getting spoiled in the summer. The milk bottles had flat cardboard tops . This was NJ USA. Very convenient
@@marilynackerman9185I remember those paper caps.
Disappeared down in east Kent about 10 years ago☹️
Moo
Knob and post wiring, to the best of my knowledge, was not a "less expensive" alternative, but the standard of the industry at the time. I have never seen any other method used from that period whether more expensive or otherwise.
The wiring we use today is much more prone to shorts from nails and screws. To make it safe, they needed rules on how and where it could be used. You can't run a cable through a 2 by 3, but you can through a 2 by 4, and there are limits on the lengths of both screws and nails, so they won't pierce such cables.
@@pcno2832Why are you telling me this?
For science
The other systems tended to burst into flames and burn the house down, so you won't see them in surviving buildings.
@@pcno2832the systems we use today are much safer due to modern electrical codes requiring grounding and overcurrent protection devices like circuit breakers.
The water pitcher thing makes so much sense. Even though we had plumbing my great grandmother would always bathe this way. She would fill up the small basin and bathe with a pitcher.
I love butler’s pantries-my last apartment had a huge walk-in pantry and when I had to move, I would only look for places with a pantry..and a gas stove-an absolute must!
The house I grew up in was built in 1902 .. Laundry chute was strategically placed so that it had a door in the attic (for the butler's apartment), the 2nd floor (for family use), the kitchen on the 1st floor (for the maid's use) and then finally in the basement in the laundry room. Our butler's pantry also had a cabinet with a radiator in it, for warming plates. All the bedrooms had dressers built into the closets. The house had a front door, a back door and a service entrance with a tiled foyer for catering, that opened into the dining room. Each of these doors and the master bedroom had doorbells that rang in the kitchen, with a dial indicating which room or door required attention. There was also a brass tube about 2" diameter between all the floors that worked as an intercom, each with a little door that would whistle when you blew into it. Both front and back doors had tiled foyers to take off snow covered boots and both had coat closets with windows, allowing you a view to see what the weather was like.
Sounds amazing. A very practical person designed that.
What a wonderful house! You were so fortunate to grow up there. A friend had a large house too; their butler's pantry had a "chilling closet" that had cold air circulated up from the rainwater cistern in the basement. It also had slots for the leaves of the dining table (they had the original furniture) and slots for boards they could wrap with the tablecloths without wrinkling them by folding them. (The same principle as fabric bolts that you see at fabric stores.) The zinc double sink in the butler's pantry had a metal tube that would fit into the drain, so that they could maintain a water level but keep the tap running (clearly for rinsing something or keeping it cold). But I'm glad I didn't have her workload--that house was a career in itself.
Sounds just like Downton Abbey.
My parents built a new house in the late 60s...mom insisted on a laundry chute to the basement. About 20 years ago they tore the shower out of the second bathroom ( there was no bathtub there ) and put a laundry room there so Mom didn't have to go in the basement anymore for that. Mom always thought ahead. Just last year a chair lift was installed for basement trips. Mom looks so cute and content riding it....
I grew up in the house built in 1980 that had a laundry shoot . I live in a house built in 1882 That does not have one. Sounds like you grew up in a mansion though
I've seen older homes with huge internal sliding double doors between rooms. They can be opened when there are a lot of guests coming and going or closed to seal off parts of the house. That would was nice to have in a home -- open and closed concepts at the same time.
They're called pocket doors. I love them.
I have a weird obsession with pocket doors😅 especially large double pocket doors. They are just the coolest thing
@@Lifeisbeautiful617 Same here but they are expensive to install.
@@sbffsbrarbrr Expensive to install but worth every cent. Improperly hung pocked doors are useless. Properly gliding doors are a beauty like no other.
I have these double sliding doors in my house in England, dividing the dining room from the sitting room. They were one of the features I really liked about the house when I bought it. I don't think any of the similar houses round about have this feature any more.....all 'modernised' into open plan, difficult to heat barns!
Nice history lesson, and a great selection of photos! Thanks!
The house across the street from me has a coal chute. My nephew once owned a house that had knob & tube wiring in the basement. There was also a basement joist that still had bark on the narrow length.
When I was about 9, my parents purchased the home of my grandparents where my mom lived as a teenager. As our family grew, they eventually renovated the servants quarters into a bedroom/suite for me, as I was the eldest. This meant adding hallway access along the second story as originally you had to go to the basement and through a hallway, the basement rooms (3 plus a well room) then up 4 flights of stairs. We had the coolest house.
Just like the picture rail, chair rails were also common. They also prevented damage to the walls from the top of a chair rubbing against it. They were also a beautiful decorative touch as you could split the color and/ or wallpaper between top and bottom.
So that's what these are for, I just thought they were purely decorative.
Ooohhhh, so that’s what they are for, my house has those and I always wondered why.
Our home was built in 2002 and the dining room has chair rails. They haven't gone out of style.
We had chair rails in the kitchen & dining room but no fear of any chair getting that close to the wall.
A lot of the newer homes built 2015 on up won't have this now because it's considered 'old fashioned' and people like the 'cube modern' asethetic, as I call it. I miss Victorian styled homes. @@user-jy1md7vk1w
We had a new house in the 1990's that had a parlor, though we called it the living room. There was a separate family room, and the living room was only used on special occasions. It had the comfiest couches in the house, so I loved when we got to use it.
Many of the houses built in the 80s had front rooms and in the back of the house what was called a great room.
Yup, the "just for looks" couch we kiddos were forbidden to get anywhere near.
I grew up in a Chicago apartment building with a coal chute door that opened on the alley for deliveries. Coal was used for the furnace into the Sixties! I remember the fine ash it left on my face and how that dirtied the snow.
I used to own a 100-year-old home with a milk door - so interesting! I thought it was a useful mail door where the post carrier could put smaller packages as needed (that's what we used it for).
Not shown in the video, but I really liked the fold-down ironing board which was in the kitchen of an apartment that I rented. Was in it's own little built in cabinet with a shelf for the iron. Sounds like a weird location, but the kitchen was huge and had a counter which separate the cooking area from what was obviously the original location for the washer/dryer. A second counter was along the wall in the laundry area, apparently for folding clothes.
I've got two in my 1940's house right now. They were real handy back before 'drip-dry' or 'wash and wear' clothes.
Where I live there used to be thousands of victorian homes (until the state of California declared them protected and so they all mysteriously caught on fire or had termites or something) so we still had companies about that would service and make to order stuff like this. I remember my parents bought the house I grew up in they debated about getting one and did, but it eventually became the shotgun storage because it had a lock on since my mom was worried me and my brother would hurt ourselves
She had lost a cousin our age when she was young who had trapped himself in one upside down and suffocated sadly
Well, I think that was redundant, anyone would suppose he didn't suffocate happily.@@tiggytheimpaler5483
Yes! You see them in old movies and shows. Great feature that should have never left.
They put them in the kitchen because it was likely warmer than other rooms, close to the washer/dryer, would absolutely have an electrical outlet, and the enclosure wouldn't disturb the ambiance of the room. Most importantly, it was where the housewife spent most of her time, so she could do the ironing in her free time while cooking for the family.
I remember renting a house with a milk door, but there was also a built into the wall spice cabinet, and a drop down ironing board. Brilliant!
I remember all these things. Really enjoyed watching.
My great Uncle was 'the iceman' in his town. I still remember the truck he used with his name on the side. He delivered blocks of ice till the mid 60's for people's Ice Boxes ( mostly older persons living on remote farms). He stayed in the ice business till he retired in the mid 70's ; continuing to deliver ice to bars , restaurants and catering companies.
My mom was born in 39. Remembers the ice man, junk man & rag man coming around.
My dad was born in 39 and it was his uncle that was the ice Man. One of his teenage jobs in the mid 1950's was helping his uncle with his route . My Uncle's oldest son helped too during the same time period before going off into the Navy. That son ended up becoming my godfather. @@samanthab1923
Fun to see so many of the features that my 1908 house had. My mom used to talk about forgetting to empty the drip pan under the icebox & flooding the kitchen floor. What a pain! But the picture rail is a GREAT feature---the plaster in my walls was so hard you couldn't pound a nail thru, had to use a screw to hang anything, but w/ picture rail, easy-peasy. Another old feature is the "California" cooler---not only found in CA. It was a narrow cupboard w/ a slatted floor open to the basement to draw cool air up. It kept vegetables & butter cool but not cold.
Our house was the same with the hard plaster until the basement walls started crumbling from a random flooding over the years & morons who put shrubs & trees up against the house that had to be ripped out.
My grandparents' circa 1900 home in Pittsburgh PA had an item not mentioned here: An instantaneous central hot water heater. It was made by Ruud, had a cast iron housing, and held a large copper coil inside. That coil had about 50 turns and was about 24" in diameter. A natural gas burner with a large round nozzle sat in the bottom center of the copper coil. There was no storage tank. When you opened a hot water tap, a water pressure switch on the heater activated the gas burner. Very hot water arrived upstairs within less than a minute.
I love the picture rails and the milk door.
My 1934 house had a strange feature that I didn't figure out until about 10 years ago. It was a pipe that led to the septic system, and it came from beneath the kitchen pantry. There was a covered-up hole in the pantry floor right above this pipe. It turns out that this was how all that melted ice from the ice box drained, and it was capped off when the house first got a refrigerator! And, yes, the kitchen had one of those swinging doors, which I loved! My grandparents had that house built, but they never told me about the ice box.
Huh, that would explain a pipe structure I can see in my basement that leads up to what used to be a butler’s pantry (now powder room).
That could be useful if you get a modern fridge with an ice maker and cold filtered water dispenser to drain the overflow. Usually that goes to a container that is a pain in the ass to empty and clean.
In my parents' house (built 1941), there's an outlet in the living room. It is an antenna hookup for the radio. The antenna is run in the insulation in the attic (completely unpowered, so no fire risk). Of course, your radio was your major form of entertainment pre-TV. And it also had a laundry chute in the hallway between the bedrooms. It fit between the studs, and was too narrow for even a small child to fall down it.
In some homes the ice box was built to back up to a porch and had a door at the back. The ice man could deliver ice without coming into the house.
I haven’t thought of it in years but my cousins house had the swinging door into the kitchen. It was always held open though.
My grandparents bought their home in 1930 for $1,600. It was heated w coal. I loved the coal chute, can see it to this day. The coal room, in the basement, was fascinating.
I recall it was quite a big deal when they paid to install central heating -- I believe it was gas? As their stove was?
They had a creamy-white 1920's refrigerator, with the classic cream white, ribbed cylinder on top -- what was that, the motor?
They also had an icebox in the basement. The entire basement was as spotless as the house above. Spotless and perfectly enamelled, also wallpapered, w crystal chandeliers.
Wide, mahogany? door trim, casings, doors, huge, 10?"11"? mahogany baseboards.
"Oriental" rugs on the wood-planked, stained & waxed floors.
Linoleum in the bath (clawfoot tub) + kitchen.
Oh, my, a laundry chute in a pantry right off the kitchen, with the closed-in outside porch room, THEN back door + screen door (always, in those days) and outside porch & steps.
Glorious ornamental + edible huge garden. Queen Anne's Lace, a huge lilac, roses. Peonies were Grandma's favorite flower.
Peaches, apples, apricots, nectarines, cherries, strawberries, every kind of veg -- peas, radishes, cukes, beans, carrots, lettuces, green onion, peppers, zucchini, celery, edamame (?), rhubarb (rhubarb pie!).
Grandpa churned homemade ice cream on the back stoop.
My house was built in 1901. I was looking behind a cabinet in the basement and I saw it had a coal chute in the front of the house. Also it still has some of the knob and wires in the attic.
My husband and I moved into our first rental house. It was built in 1938. I loved living in the house. It had a huge Archway inside between the living room and the kitchen. It had a built in wall closet in the kitchen. It reminded me of my late grandparents home. I used to visit them when I was a little girl. They had a wall closet for their ironing board. The wall closet was in the kitchen. My late grandparents home was built in the 1930s. My husband and I live in our second rental home and it was built in 1940. I love this home too. It's has two bedrooms and one bathroom. We have a built in laundry attachment in our kitchen.
It's _incredibly_ refreshing to see a video just describing such things in a calm and factual manner, without politics, without moralizing, without taking jabs at anybody, without passing any judgments, without outrage or ridicule. Just a calm soothing voice describing in a simple matter-of-fact manner things of the past, and that's it.
Nowadays it's almost impossible to find such videos. Kudos!
the voice sounds like an A.I. to me. Still enjoyed the video for the content, but the voice was a little distracting for me.
So true.
Another feature older homes had that I’m not sure has been mentioned are water cisterns. These were large cavities built into the foundations where rain water was collected and then drawn from by hand pump.
Those were not universally common. Probably extremely regional.
In many places today, it is now illegal for a homeowner to impound rainwater. I know the stuff falls from the sky and everything but that's what they make you do.
@@anonymike8280 more government overreach.
@@hensonlaura Especially, that was so in Western Washington. Then again, by diverting water and water rights, they managed to create water shortages in a region where water shortage were not naturally possible. Neat trick.
@anonymike8280 that's a myth. For homes it was always legal. Using it on massive scale enough to disturb local ecosystem is illegal in some places.
Normal homes can collect rainwater no problem
Great video. Didn't learn about new things but learned why they had them in more ways then I was aware of and that is just as valuable! Subed and will watch other for sure now!