How long has this word(s) been around. I started watching some construction on tv and they give me the impression that the northern part of US (maybe Canada too) uses the term. Well I lived around construction while in NYC , Long Island and some NY state for a number of years (moved away in late 70's) and never heard the term then. Is a mud room similar to a foyer except it can be as a separate room?
Not IME. It is a room one enters - frequently via the back door - to remove galoshes and the like so you don't track mud, snow, whatever into the house. I am almost 79 and the phrase has been around as long as I can remember (and I remember back to when I was two).
Having grown up in NYC (Queens) I had never heard of the term "mud room" until I moved to western NY in the early 80's.
However, there may be a reason I never heard of them: None of the areas where I or any of my friends lived had the style of house where a mud room could have been included. We lived in row houses, side-by- side duplexes (not rentals, owner occupied on both sides), and of course, apartment buildings. None of these styles were really set up to have a mud room.
I do recall some houses having a small, enclosed back porch or the like where shoes, baseball gloves and other assorted items piled up, but we never referred to them as mud rooms.
Once I moved to western NY, my first memory of a mud room is of a room between a "semi attached" garage and the main house where dirty shoes and winter clothes could be removed. I later learned that they are simply a separate room accessed via a side or back door, sometimes doubling as a laundry room.
I'm in Ontario and mud room usually refers to a back room, either near garage, or from backyard, and mostly has a utility sink to clean up.
I've noticed a number of newer houses, esp in rural areas with larger lots, incorporate a mud room/bathroom or mudroom/laundry combo beside garage entrance.
but basically it's a small room near a back entrance so that you don't run into the kitchen and muddy things up there.
Generally up here in the "great white north" the "mud room" is on the "secondary" entrance, not the formal entrance - while the "foyer" is at the formal or primary entrance.
More or less an off-shoot from the farm-house where when you came in from the barn there was a room where you took off your "barn clothes" before entering the kitchen.(after the days of the "woodshed" and "summer kitchen")
And do you call the foyer the "foy yey" or the "foy- yerr"
On 7/2/2012 1:33 PM, DerbyDad03 wrote: ...
Of course there is...you couldn't have had any mud if you tried... :)
--
I played softball in an grocery store league for a few years. The games were played in a school yard with bases and baselines painted on the black top. Sliding sucked.
That is what you call an "air lock" - which IS one function of a mud-room.
If you'd have ventured up as far as the Catskills you'd have heard the term since about the 50's.
In general terms- it was where you kicked your boots off. I've seen them 4x4 & I've seen them 12x40. Might be heated space-- maybe not. Could have a brushed concrete floor-- or imported Eye-talian marble. . . .
Jim
Which *could be* one function of a mud room.
Not all mud rooms are designed to be air locks.
Here's lots of pictures of areas referred to as mud rooms that aren't serving as air locks.
It can also function as a weather lock, keeping wind out if there are two doors. Good in cold climates.
Greg
It is one function of a mud-room - whether a designer decides to implement it or not is his problem. I didn't say ALL mud rooms are air locks - but if it has a door on either end, making it a ROOM, not a hallway, it can be used as an air-lock.
I also grew up somewhat in Queens ... Flushing to be more exact. You basically described what I lived in then. I never lived upstate but frequented maybe once a year to visit relatives in Utica tho I have relatives in other parts of NY including western NY. Maybe that's why I never heard of it just like yourself???? Well everyone is educating me now. I now recall one of my aunts had a mud room on her house in Utica tho it was converted into a small kitchen but otherwise fits the description everyone so far described. I will read the remaining posts in this thread now. Thanks !!
I pronounce it as the latter but don't ask me what Texans call it as I never asked them. I do know that "pecan" is pronounced different than what I pronounced it in NY and it's the only word that I actually now pronounce as a Texan. In other words as long as I don't say that word in NY, no one will ever know I moved away years ago from NYC / LI. I've been told that I never lost my NYC accent tho it's funny now .... when I listen to some NY'ers, I hear their accent whereas when I lived there, that never happened.
Care to narrow it down even further? I too grew up in Flushing.
Spent lots of time playing football, frisbee and sledding on the grounds of Queens College when there still a lot of green space.
If you look out of my old front window now there's a glass and steel building instead of open field. Way, way back it was woods.
On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:29:03 -0500, "Doug" wrote in Re Re: mud rooms:
I grew up in Astoria. When I first started to drive in 1965 I had
1961 Sunbeam Alpine. The only place I could get "foreign car" parts for it was a small parts store that was in Flushing. I seem to recall that is was near where Norther Blvd crossed over the creek near College Point Ave. I could be wrong about that. It's been a long time.I left NYC in 1969 and never went back, except for very brief family visits.
Foyer, schmoyer! We called it the front hall....would have been a little strange for a family of five in a two-bedroom apartment to get snobby about that small space. Parents lived in same apartment for over forty years, brother in same building for sixty.
We call ours a "dog lock"; it stops the critters escaping when coming into the house.
I lived on Main Street and went to school at John Bowne HS. I used to love it when the college students came over to protest and held up traffic on Main Street in front of the High School.
Slightly off topic, a few years ago I was eating at a local restaurant in Houston, Texas and the woman at the next table started to talk to me. It turned out she and I both graduated from John Bowne HS the same year. She started to ask me if I knew so and so and unfortunately I didn't remember the names she threw at me.
Well I moved from Flushing to Nassau County for a couple of years before I moved to Texas. I left LI in late 1979. I use to take the subway train thru Astoria on the way to Manhattan. I think it was the IRT #7.
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