Homes Are Always Evolving
There is a reason why we don’t use vintage gas stoves anymore, or why we don’t have gas lamps to light up our homes. As technology evolves, homes evolve with it. Here are a few home features that have fallen out of use because of technology.
TV Antennas
If you’ve seen an old TV, you know that they were all dials, knobs, and antennas. These twin antennas usually sat atop TVs and helped them receive images (and most of the time needed to be jostled around for the TV to work). Today, 4K OLED Smart TVs have made them a thing of the past.
Intercom
The older cousin of smart doorbells, intercoms were used back in the day not only to communicate with people standing outside your door but also between different rooms of the house. Nowadays, cell phones and ring cams have replaced the need for intercoms, and you can only find them in hotels and old apartments.
Servant Call Button
If you’ve seen Downtown Abby or The Gilded Age, you know that these are buttons in the middle of the house that were used to call the butler or maid when needed. Suffice to say, at a time when most of us don’t even have servants, having a servant floor button is pointless.
Rotary Phone
We all know what these are, and yes, not having a backspace or a redial button made them thoroughly inconvenient, but there is no denying the charm of using this nostalgic piece of analogue technology.
Oil Tanks
Before gas and electricity, people relied on petroleum oil to heat their house, and oil tanks were where this oil was stored. They were either buried underground or stored in basements. Now, with gas boilers and electric heaters becoming the standard, oil tanks have become redundant.
Razor Slits in Medicine Cabinet
It might seem absurd and even unsanitary to us now, but back in the 30s and 40s, such slits to dispose of razors were fairly common. You would drop used razors in the slit, and they’d just stay there, in the wall, for all eternity.
Milk Door
We don’t live in the days of the milkman delivering bottles of milk to our house, so the little door by the side of the house is useless. But, in the 50s and 60s, milk would be delivered here, and mom could pick it up without having to go out.
Ice Door
Before refrigeration became standard in homes, ice was also delivered by an ice man into insulated ice boxes that were placed in the kitchen or pantry. These ice doors were used to receive the delivery of ice without the risk of it melting.
Coal Chutes to the Basement
Like the milk door and the ice door, this small iron door was also used for deliveries—particularly for coal. This door concealed a chute leading directly to the basement, where the coal would be deposited and later used in the furnace to heat the house.
Boot Scraper
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, walking outside meant wading through mud, muck, and horse and dog excrement. Naturally, one would want to clean their shoes before coming into the house. Enter, the boot scraper, a small contraption built by the front door at ground level.
Dumbwaiters
While some old houses still have these tiny elevators, they’re hardly used now for the original purpose. Initially, they were meant to help the staff move food, laundry, and other utility items between the floors of a house with less effort and without being seen. Nowadays, such dumbwaiters are mostly decorative.
Speaking Tubes
Kind of like the cup-and-string phones we made as kids, these speaking tubes were used to talk between rooms of a house before intercoms became standard. Nowadays, most of them have been disassembled and replaced with either intercom systems or just mobile phones.
Root Cellars
Before refrigerators were invented, produce had to be stored in the coldest part of the house, which was usually the basement. Root cellars were built in basements for this purpose. Now, most of these rooms sit empty or have been converted to wine cellars for storing expensive fine wine and spirits.
Butler’s Pantries
Do you have a small room between the kitchen and the formal dining room that you don’t know the purpose of? It’s most likely an old butler’s pantry. These small rooms were used to store and prep food before it was brought out during dinner parties.
Transom Windows
Before air conditioning became a thing, small windows on top of doors helped circulate cool air between rooms. These windows were called transom windows. Today, although some houses do still have them, they are usually kept locked.
