There is something about old houses that makes them conceal their history right before our eyes: it could be a little door, a slit in a medicine cabinet, or even a button in the floor of the dining room that nobody wants to step on. These facts are no bizarre edges. They used to be the daily workings of domestic life delivery systems, ventilation moxies and first efforts at convenience.
It has features that continue to work, features that were shut off decades ago and features that brought up issues that only become relevant given the way of life that people used to live.
1. Oil tanks that outlived their job
The old-fashioned houses which used fuel oil occasionally still have buried oil tank somewhere in the basement or crawlspace though the heating system is switched. The tank could be left, detached, or even not removed at all due to the difficulty in moving out. To the contemporary household with a house, it may appear as a bizarre industrial artifact- particularly when it is in a house already completed. Its existence is generally an indication of earlier heating period and may account oddly running pipes, patched masonry, or unoccupied fill points outdoors.
2. Whole-house intercoms that nobody answers
In Mid-century houses, inbuilt intercoms enabled one to call children to dinner, talk across floors or make someone buzz without yelling. There are quite a number who burn, or crackle, or stand mute on the wall like a museum label. These systems became obsolete when mobile phones and smart door cameras eliminated the necessity to call people at home by page, however, the wiring and speaker grilles are a reminder of the previous type of household connections.
3. Rotary phones that require patience and muscle memory
A certain rhythm was required in rotary dialing: put in a finger, turn to the metal stop, and wait till the dial was back one digit at a time. Misdialling was the only way to hang up and restart again, as there was no backspace. Design is still charming to a collector, but experience so alien as to be now a time-worn how does this work? time to those who have always owned touchscreens and voice assistants.
4. “Rabbit ear” antennas that needed constant fussing
Rabbit ears have given decades of time, when a clear image and a snow of static appeared in front of the TV. The twin rods had to be repositioned and once I had a person standing still in position and the antenna at exactly the right angle. With the advent of televisions with digital reception and built-in tuners, the tradition of fiddling with the antenna was over. All that is left is the recollection of the living-room engineering and the strangeness of a machine that is to be touched all the time.
5. Milk doors built for quiet, contactless delivery
A milk door is a tiny, two-access cubby fitted into the exterior wall to allow dropping off of bottles without the need to open the front door. It was a kind of secure doorstep delivery. Actually, the milk doors are back in the news because of the pandemic, and new models of it are said to have access restriction and hygiene measures. In the old houses, the old cubby is likely to be reused as a package storage, pantry overrun or just a favorite quirk.
6. Butler’s call buttons hiding under the dining room rug
There were also formal dining rooms that had a floor button which was used to call staff. It might be a single button, or a segment of a larger bell system, and its location allowed it to be easily used to provide discretionary signalling at meal times. At home nowadays it is more readily found in the middle of a redesign than in its place of use- an object of the way the household work and the social space were once structured.
7. Razor slots that sent blades into the wall
Numerous antique medicine cabinets also have a slit that is marked as a razor blade. The concept was easy: put used blades on the slot and take them out of everyday life. I wondered where they led right into the wall cavity and there they could pile up as many decades as there were. It is a disturbing design decision in modern terms, yet one that deals with the days when the systems of disposal were ad-hoc, and out of sight was regarded as sufficient.
8. Boot scrapers designed for truly dirty streets
Cast-iron boot scrapers are found outside the steps and doors and are sometimes constructed into the stone, or hung alongside a door. Their existence has a single rationale: people had to walk in mud and manure every day. This decrottoir is associated with the necessity to eliminate excrement and the feature became widespread with the first walking paths and unpaved roads. When the streets were in better condition, the scraper was made ornamental but useful in the garden soil and winter slush.
9. Tiny iron coal doors and sealed chutes
The remaining access point to the delivery of coal can be a small iron door close to the bottom of an exterior wall. The coal could be shoveled in the hole into a basement bin, and then brought to the furnace when required. Most of these chutes were subsequently closed-in, although the doors are still as clear an indication as evidence of home heating in the early 20th century and in earlier times.
10. Ice doors for iceboxes, not refrigerators
Iceboxes were previously based on frequent deliveries before the modern refrigerator was invented. The iceman could use a small outside access door, usually at the pantry, or kitchen wall and drop a fresh block without getting into the house. It can be a matter of being like an intruder to have found one of them today, and it was all a matter of logistics: cold storage needed a supply chain, and the house was designed to hold one.
Taken collectively, these facts justify this fact: houses were traditionally built around delivery routes, manual labor and air-conditioning tricks instead of applications, appliances and open spaces.
Learning how to use each of the features once more is not of the greatest help to homeowners and renovators, they should learn how it used to work in the past, so that the strange corners and small doors of the house will finally make sense.
