History of Buildings Layout?
Do any of you Brownstoners have a waste line in the front of your house? I have been trying to figure out the usage over the years of a 1842 house, currently a 4 family. When I purchased in 80’s, previous owners had been there 50 years, and they had installed kitchens and baths in…
Do any of you Brownstoners have a waste line in the front of your house?
I have been trying to figure out the usage over the years of a 1842 house, currently a 4 family. When I purchased in 80’s, previous owners had been there 50 years, and they had installed kitchens and baths in the 1950’s. That plumbing was two rear chases, one for kitchens across from stairwell, andthe other 4″ stack down stair side rear corner. So far that is typical and usual.
My question regard a 3rd 4″ watseline that goes across basement ceiling, then up front, half in the wall in the front hallway, near to the bottom of stairs, maybe 2′ forward of newel post.
I have found various gas fittings in front parlors, next to fireplaces.
does this sound familiar? I can imagine a rooming house, or coldwater flat arrangement.
I have even imagined that this front waste line was installed before the rear chases? There don’t seem to be any waste connections on the garden or parlor floors. Would there have only been toilets or plumbing on the 2nd and top floors? Would this have been done when house still had a family, perhaps with roomers?
I have deduced that there was a renovation around 1900, when parquet floor were installed, definitely before the steam heating system was installed.
I’m usually pretty good with figuring out old houses, but this 3rd stack puzzles me. Any ideas?
I believe a boarding house was just a regular house where the landlady rented out rooms. Naturally, the boarders would use the bath on their floor, just as family members would.
Seems to me bathrooms, water closets, and closets with sinks in them were common going back to the 1850s. But the only plumbing I’ve seen in the front of a building would be a sink in the front bedroom. (Where the stack and waste line would be located for it I don’t know.)
Unless…..maybe your place was a school, church, or stable and the waste line is for a drinking fountain, outdoor sink, or holy water!
What I’m thinking is that the front stack emptied forward of the house, not back (even, possibly dumping straight into the gutter). You might want to check a plat map at the Brooklyn Historical Society and find whether your house was set on farmland or street grid. What I can tell you from living in an an old-law tenement is that our line of apartments had the tub in the kitchen and the toilet in the hall (i.e., you had to leave the apartment to use the toilet). Other lines had water closets inside their apartments, but I suspect at one time all apartments used the single hall toilet per floor (four apartments per floor—two front, two rear).
Now I understand you’re talking about a house and not a tenement, but maybe that helps with insight re: boarding houses. You’ll definitely find lodging-house photos in Jacob Riis’ book, “How the Other Half Lives,” though they’re mostly
shots of sleeping quarters. Not sure where the rest of his collection is archived—maybe BHS can help you with that, too.
Vinca,
Another good guess, but I have excavated the cesspool in the back yard, and there was no evidence of wastelines. Besides, that run would be real long, from the front of house to back yard.
Question is, what did rooming houses look like? Did roomers maybe expect to go upstairs to a single toilet?
Any chance your house pre-dates the public sewer system in your neighborhood and the stacks originally led to drywells or cesspools? Some of NY’s “modern” sewer system post-dates the cholera epidemics of the early- and mid-1800s.
jfss, I’m talking about a full blown 4″ cast iron waste stack, that connects into the main 5″ waste line going out to the street.
Bruce
To an architect in Brooklyn, that’s a good guess, but we have a peaked roof front and back and the surrounding (4)houses are intact in terms of rooflines, except for one that must have had a fire, because it now has a flat roof.
Mopar, sorry if my desription was unclear. This a 22′ wide attached brick circa 1842, and the waste pipe I am referring runs up the front hallway maybe 10′ back from the front door, half in the wall. i haven’t yet found any t’s in it, but i am guessing they will turn out to be in the floors above, probably a lead bend with a side takeoff vent or sink drain. On the top floor, the hallway is truncated with a not original wall that adds the top floor front of hallway to the top apartment. The layout in the apt. always puzzled me in that there are two closets side by side in that hallway space, before the small front one window room.
I’m not sure I follow your description but I have an ice box drain near the front of the house but it goes up and then back behind the staircase to the kitchen. It didn’t drain directly into the main sewer line. There was a copper (I think) divided box with a drain that attached by short pipe directly to the main sewer line. The pipe to the ice box was suspended over the box and poured from the pipe into the box.
Open pipe is no longer to code and anyway, I opted for an electric refrigerator instead of an ice box.
I’m having a hard time following your description. It was common to have piped water to sinks in the front bedroom and/or between bedrooms, as well as to bathrooms and water closets in the middle of the house, as early as the 1840s to 1860s, depending on the fanciness of the house. It was sometimes the case that water would extend only to the penultimate floor, and not to the top floor, where the children and servants might have slept.
How about: draining storm water from the front of the roof?
Some buildings I’ve worked on have or have had that “cheater” roof, sloping down in the front of the house towards the street, but a full story in the back. One project this cheater roof was pulled off and a new facade put up on the third level. Now sometimes the leaders are on the front of the house, but a stack for draining could have been internal as well.
Interesting question!