Holmes inspection

[gregz]

Watching show. They laughed at toilet in basement with no walls. They actually removed it. I didn't really think nothing of it being from Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh toilet.

Greg

[hrhofmann]

I have seen a few of those over the years, usually a shower curtain or something around them

[Hell Toupee]

That was a standard thing in our post-WWII Minnesota neighborhood. As a kid I thought an open toilet (well, usually screened with a shower curtain) was weird, but then I figured, how often are people using a basement?

Years later I toured a Frank Lloyd Wright mansion (the Dana-Thomas House in Illinois). Although it was a mansion, it had only two bathrooms, one of which was in the master bedroom area. Neither the bedroom nor the bathroom had doors, but the open, doorless feature was a characteristic of that home's design. Lots of smallish rooms, few doors. It was hard to imagine the wealthy woman who'd owned it throwing such huge parties (she had her own railroad siding for the convenience of her equally wealthy guests), when the rooms were so small and the whole place had only two biffies.

[RicodJour]

The weirdest toilet location I ever saw was on the landing of a stair to a basement. You'd open the door to the basement and the toilet was staring at you. You had to squeeze by it to go down the stairs.

Thirty years ago I was on a FLLW historic tour, led by Edgar Tafel, and we hit a whole bunch of Wright's buildings, the Dana house being one of them. I don't remember all of the details, but I don't remember there being a dearth of doors or bathrooms.

The basement level has two bathrooms.

The first floor has two bathrooms. The second floor has three bathrooms, and all of them have doors, as does the master bedroom. R

[gfretwell]

The original idea was that in a starter house, Harry homeowner was going to finish that basement (he dreamed of knotty pine, usually settled on paneling) .

They set the toilet because that is virtually impossible later.

I think most states required the builder to put up some kind of partition (it was always a "powder room" in Md) and I guess they didn't have that law in Pittsburgh.

[N8N]

In most of the older Pittsburgh homes that I've seen, there *was* a rudimentary partition (sort of like a residential version of a stall,) although no proper bathroom - I guess you washed your hands in the laundry sink. For some reason none of the basements ever seemed to get finished; they just remained utility or workshop/laundry space.

nate

[Ed Pawlowski]

Hard to imagine today, but back then, two fixtures was real luxury. Just a few years earlier, it would have been chamber pots and outhouses.

We sure have it good today in our part of the world.

[Ed Pawlowski]

As a kid, our house in Philadelphia was like that. Just a small partition and a pull chain light. Basements were not usually finished in the 40's and 50's and it was utilitarian for laundry, storage,, the furnace, etc.

We had no clothes dryer so in the winter, mom put up lines and hung the clothes in the basement. At that point, we did have an automatic washing machine though, but wringer models were still in regular use.

[N8N]

Hah. memories... I think it was only when my grandparents moved to a new(er) smaller house sometime after I graduated from high school when my grandmother abandoned her old Maytag washing machine with the manual wringer for a new(er) automatic one. IIRC there was a mini- apartment in the old horse barn that hadn't been used in ages save for storage, and there was another one in there presumably for parts in case something broke. It wasn't that they didn't have money, she just claimed that it was what she was used to, and anyway, it did a better job than those newfangled automatic washers. (don't know if that's true or not, I've never used one save for helping her...)

I seriously hope that whoever bought the place called in an antiques dealer to get rid of that stuff, instead of the junk man... I'm sure that there's people out there that would consider a working 40's vintage washing machine to be collectible.

nate

[bob haller]

i have a wealthy friend, who still uses a wringer washer. just him and his 2 sisters