1. "92 2nd in two flats"
Posted by audrey on Mar-23rd-04 at 2:27 PM

Does anyone know how the house was divided?

Apparently there was a divider in the dining room, which made it 2 rooms.
That would mirror the upstairs.  Emma's room and Mrs. Borden's dressing room would be the original design.
There was a kitchen in the master bedroom, and maybe a sink there above where the sink room was downstairs.
You might be able to infer which rooms became "common" rooms within the flat and which, bedrooms?  Also, which entrance door would correspond with which flat? 

(Message last edited Mar-23rd-04  2:54 PM.)

A "dining room" is the sina qua non for a middle-class houshold.

Earlier cottages basically had one big room for kitchen, bedroom, etc. Four-posters w/ curtains took care of privacy. Or so I read.
Wealth resulted in much larger homes by the 19th century, except in rural frontier areas. Mid-century hotels usually required sharing a bed when filled up, etc. Most people just took off their boots and climbed into bed, or wore a nightshirt. Simple primitive times.
European peasants lived in a one-room chanty, maybe with an upper sleeping platform. Or so I read.
...
Edmund Pearson's book tells how Andy converted a two-family house into a one-family house. Andy looked up all the carpenters whose mortgage he held, and forced them to work for free or have their mortgages called (as I remember it).

(Message last edited Mar-23rd-04  4:06 PM.)

Which Pearson book is that, please?
Do you recall?

I might imagine that the smallest rooms: the dress closet, the split rooms (which eventually combined made the dining room), were bedrooms.  That would make 3.  Then the kitchen was probably the place for all the meals.  That would leave the sitting room, parlour and foyer for?

Kat, we used to live in an old milltown flat--a bit newer than the Borden's but similar in design, purpose and region.  Each appartment mirrored the other, except that the upstairs was reached by front or back stairways--separate entrance in front, common back entrance.  Our floorplan was sort of a double column, without hallway:  large living room, French doors into a study (sitting room), doorway into dining room, doorway into kitchen. To the right of these rooms were mor doors: master bedroom off kitchen, small room size pantry off kitchen, spare closet off dining room, bathroom off living room, second bedroom off study, entryway (foyer) off study.  People got very confused trying to find the bath because of all the doors.  There were 6 rooms in all, plus pantry and full bath--all about the size of the 2nd bedroom. You could have (gently) driven a golf ball from the living room to the kitchen.  I think the original design would have been: parlor, sitting room, dining room, kitchen. Our pantry might have doubled as sewing room, and a back storage room that had the common entryway might feasibly have housed a servant.

I suspect Abby's sewing room might have been a kitchen (without running water?).  I'm a bit surprised that the bedrooms opened into one another.  I have never seen that anywhere else, and yet it seems to have been that way always.  Reversing the floor plan would still leave bedroom opening onto bedroom, and that I can't quite figure, unless there was some fire trap concern that I'm missing.  I think one of those little room would have to be a pantry.  Pantries were large and indispensable.  Also, perhaps a sewing/ironing room, where all the ongoing household work could be done and shut off while in process when necessary.  One other possibility is the sick room--also crucial in a time when epidemics were so common.  Do any of these line up with what you saw?  I've studied the floorplans, but I have trouble SEEING the plans as rooms.

--Lyddie

Wasn't it posted that the front stairway was original to the house?  If so, then I would see the foyer as a common vestibule as in any apartment building.  The parlor and sitting room, hmmmm.  I guess that would depend on the size of the family that was renting the flat and I would assume, their income.  I could see the sitting room being used as a dining room if all meals weren't eaten in the kitchen.  The parlor I see as being used as a sitting room/parlor. 

But, if those two small rooms were filled with kids then I see the parlor as the master bedroom and the sitting room as the sitting room/parlor.

Oh there you go.  That makes sense.  The sitting room was the sitting room and the parlour was the master bedroom.
That could leave the dress closet as a bedroom or a sewing place/ironing whatever.  That would still be 3 bedrooms.  That sounds about right.
I don't consider the need of a dining room in this type of dwelling.
The kitchen (Andrew's room) is large.  The same back hall would mirror the one below so the upper sink room might irror the one below as well.

The kitcen, we know, was above the current kitchen- plus it is usual, for pipes etc. to run down within the same walls.
Maybe the positions of the fireplaces would give us a clue as to which rooms were considered the most important.

Of course, everyone would troop to the cellar to the Privy?

I have wondered if it was one floor per apartment.  Did each family have an entire floor to themselves?  It must be how it was since A&A's bedroom had a stove at one time and must have been the kitchen.  Did both apartments have a front and side entrance or did Andrew add the back stairs?

Who would have gotten the attic?

Lyddie,

I plan on taking a video cam with me when I go again in April.  If it turns out decent, I would be glad to send you a copy.  It may give you clearer vision of how the house is arranged.  I did get a video the first time I was there, but it is a bit jumppy from me being excited about being in the house and trying to see it all...all at once.  I felt like a kid in a candy store !

Tracy...

But weren't the few pipes they had installed by Andrew, Kat?  I imagine the upstairs dweller hauling water up and down those stairs--unless they had those sinks with the hand pumps in them. Likewise, the water closet, which I think Andrew installed.  I think they'd have all trooped to the backyard.  Imagine standing in line when it's 10 below zero!

--Lyddie

(Message last edited Mar-24th-04  12:38 PM.)

Tracy, what a generous offer!  I'd love to see it!  I've seen some of the house on tv shows, but not on tape, so I could rewind and double check things. I'm hoping to get down there this summer some time.  I know that if I do, there'll by a million things I'll think of later that I'll wish I had checked.  Like blood on the cellar ceiling.  A good strong flashlight sounds like a must.  I can't help thinking that the ceiling got whitewashed during the "private disgrace" days.  As recently as the 1980's, people disliked the notoriety.  It amazes me how the attitude has changed.  Maybe the centennial made it distant enough to relax about the subject more.

--Lyddie

I imagine some kind of sink.  I don't know how they were hooked up.  We know running water and pipes were installed during Andrew's reign.
There may have been some kind of pump, but a sink I would think was a must, even if original, basic pipes were just to drain the water. 
Also, I called the convenience in the cellar, the privy,  to distinguish it from a Water Closet, which is what the Borden's had.  They also had a pipe which went up thru the ceiling and vented to the roof to carry away methane gas, and the window could be opened also to air the thing out.  I don't know the date of a privy in the cellar as a precursor, if there was one sometime, before the water closet was installed.  I'd bet there was something in use down there before water pipes.

There were indoor privies--usually in the barns, or throughways to the barns.  The big problem with one in the cellar would be air quality.  It was bad enough with all the food storage.  People used to lower candles into seldom used cellars, because the gases could be swift and deadly (a whole miserable section is devoted to this in the Buckeye). Perhaps if the early owners had the foresight to install the ventilation you mention, it could have worked.  But I'm not sure if they were doing that yet or not.  A lot of homes in this area still had outdoor privies and water sources through the 1860's at least:  rain barrel for laundry, backyard well for cooking and dishes.  The descriptions of eggs and little wiggly worms in the rain barrels and dead cats in the wells can make you wonder how anyone survived! (This stuff comes from Henry Shute--writing in 1902 about the late 60's).

--Lyddie

Our Honorary Aunt, born in 1919, and who grew up in Muncie, Pennsylvania, said they had an outhouse, and she knew of other's who had had an outhouse as late as 1930!

My relatives in rural NY & Penna had outhouses until the late 1940s, when electricity arrived. You can't have indoor plumbing w/o ready water! THAT is how mankind lived until the 19th century.
I once read that the further east from The Channel, the higher the percentage of privies (access to water). But flushing them into streams and waterways creates new problems.

Here is an interesting article...

http://www.bottlebooks.com/privyto.htm


Of course.. Every "WC" in my house has a bidet!  (bidet means "pony" or small horse!)

The house I grew up in was built in l676. 

When plumbing was added, this was accompolished by sectioning off dressing rooms into two seperate rooms.  One has the toilet, the bidet and a hand sink and the other has the bath tub and shower in it....

That's a neat site!  Thanks Audrey.
How in the blazes does one search for that subject and I can't believe that site is what it is! 
Does your family ever look at your past visits to sites on the Internet if they use your computer! 

Maybe this discussion should be in the Crapper, I mean Privy..

Fun article, Audrey!  Every once in a while we get a story in our paper about a local privy dig--so they're not alone!

--Lyddie