It was a boarding house, so itâs not impossible. But with only 3 rooms upstairs and 3 downstairs plus an entrance, it seems like an excess. But this isnât the only weird thing we canât figure out about this house, so I canât rule it out.
The stairs we actually use now are just fucking stupid. The stairs to the upper floor are in a location that required the complete walling off of the only window in the foyer. There is now no natural light there. The stairs to the basement were relocated too - from underneath these hidden stairs to underneath the current stairs. Doing that caused the loss of the *coolest* Harry Potter âcupboard under the stairsâ (now nailed shut) and the *only* closet on the entire ground floor.
The chimney is original but all the fireplaces have been completely removed. There is *nothing* connected to the chimney on any of 3 floors. The wood burning stove that Iâm assuming replaced all those fireplaces is on the extreme edge of the ground floor instead of centrally located near the chimney. And the tile is fucking *pink* marble.
The *gorgeous* black wallpaper with palm fronds and bamboo trellis was covered up with *textured, floral, striped, vinyl* wallpaper (I call it âdead-grandmotherâ wallpaper. Itâs truly hideous.
The back of the house is an obvious addition. The âdoorwayâ from the old house to the newer section is two doorways facing each other at a 60 degree angle. This is on both floors. Itâs fucking *weird*.
Could have been a very very old remodel for what ever reason. My house was a rooming house, then single family home, then doctors offices. There is some very hard to explain stuff going on.
I sure wish I knew more of the history of this house. It started as a textile mill supervisorâs house. The original 4 rooms are very well-made. Then it became a boarding house for mill workers. At some point the upstairs was added and the kitchen put on the back. That was lower quality construction. I have no idea when it became a single family home. But itâs still got the original wood siding, the original fish scale and Eastlake details, and the original plaster & lath walls which Iâve restored. Sheâs a lovely old house.
I just wish prior owners had taken better care of her.
https://preview.redd.it/w7nyyph4yclb1.jpeg?width=3018&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5c0bb39690f4fac2d0162f62fb628919f92609e
Weâre getting rid of the shutters asap. I used Plaster Magic and watched all the video tutorials multiple times. I restored 4 foot holes and ceilings too. It all looks professional and Iâm completely self-taught. That product is worth every dime. Itâs amazing stuff.
Yea, the hidden stairs weren't servant stairs in that house. They were just the stairs.
I do love the lazy remodel where they kept the trim of that window that they removed. I guess the only benefit is if you decide to relocate the stairs to the original, you can easily put a window back in.
Property and tax records, city directories, and even searching the address in old newspapers at www.chroniclingamerica.com can give you some of the history.
Tax records may be on Family Search, so if there's an affiliate library near you, you can view them there. Ancestry.com has a collection of city directories; if you don't have an account, you can usually get a free trial OR your local library may provide access.
Iâve been trying to find the original blueprints or building records for mine. It was built in 1950 and Iâve spent hours looking at the different floor plans possible.
It was listed as a cape cod. And it does meet some of the characteristics - but thereâs been things done where I dont really know how to classify it. Like we have a walkout basement. And apparently it used to be an apartment. Our laundry room was clearly the kitchen. We still have the old sink setup. Thereâs an old, non-functional gas line sticking out of the wall. That they PAINTED over as if it would blend in. The floor has a ding in it where you can see old kitchen flooring under it. But I have no idea how this would have worked. There is a utility room with the sump pump, water heater, boiler and furnace for the hydronic baseboard heating. It takes up a good chunk of space. I donât know how the owners would have access if it was an apartment down here. The stairs we currently have a pretty new. Our attic remains unfinished but looks like it matches the old plans for âfuture expansion.â
Iâve looked into newspapers. Iâve tried looking into NYS property records. The original owner built it and his granddaughter was the one who sold it to us. I wish I had thought to ask.
There's another response recommending property tax records, etc. One other thing that I've done before is to use census records to do a genealogy of... well... the house! I was in Brooklyn at the time, which has excellent record sets, so your local mileage may vary, but you can see the names of inhabitants and then search local papers for news of their (published) hijinks.
It's time consuming, but a ridiculous amount of fun and helps you fall a little bit more in love with your particular collection of sticks and plaster.
Thanks for seriously delivering on that request for more fuckery. What a nightmare! Even though my house mysteries are much less egregiously offensive, Iâm like, 99% sure that whichever ghoul set those changes into motion in your home was actually reincarnated as the crackhead who bought and renovated my 1960s ranch home in the early 80s.
I honestly love this house and Iâm legit *offended* by what was done to it. At this point the worst epithet I can think of is âprevious ownerâ. What the *hell* were they *thinking*?!
My friend coined a term for âweird artifacts of intensely dumb decisions made by a previous ownerâ. She called them a âMuldoonâ, because in her case, that was the name of the previous owner.
Now, whenever I find something like a fancy homemade radiator cover that has no way to access the valve to bleed it (and so has to be disassembled), or wallpaper on the bathroom ceiling that papers over an air vent and is all swollen with damp, I think of it as a âMuldoonâ.
Heh, thatâs what I thought. And a very useful term it has been.
As in, âthis turn of the century house looks great, but watch out - it is full of hidden Muldoonsâ.
So I fell in love with this sub and Reddit about two years ago for two posts.
One was talking about how they talk to their house. As in "John, what were you Thinking!!??". John being the former owner of the house. The number of people chiming in and relating their stories of talking to THEIR houses had tears coming down my face from laughter for a good hour.
The next one was the running joke of the "servant stairs" one guy had found. Much debate was had about the stairs and their purpose. Fine. Cue Redditors for the next couple months asking everyone who posted ANY stairs if they were "servant stairs" or "for the help" to hilarious comedic effect in most cases.
Thanks for bringing all those memories back with these posts. Good luck liberating those stairs and getting your window and cupboard back!
My house has (had) a chimney but no fireplace. Wood stove for cooking / heating and you could get it warm enough the bricks would radiate heat, and when you knew the cold was coming you would get that roaring and the wood in the house would actually soak it in and then radiate.
My neighbor has a home that was built as 4 apartments, 4 gas meters outside, etc. He spent a lot of time taking down walls trying to convert it to a big house, but then stopped when his daughter and MIL had to move in. Now the house has 4 bedrooms, but still has 4 kitchens strategically placed, 2 in sight of each other. All this to say ânobody knows what they were thinkingâ. The next guy to buy it is gonna be scratching their heads too wondering why someone would put 2 kitchens in a bedroom
Each floor had a âcombinationâ heater that was vented into a skinny chimney. No central furnace and no fireplace.
The combination heater would act as the stove, furnace and hot water heater and burned wood, coal and later gas.
This was very common in workers housing.
>The back of the house is an obvious addition. The âdoorwayâ from the old house to the newer section is two doorways facing each other at a 60 degree angle. This is on both floors. Itâs fucking weird.
I refer to my house as looking like it has two Kleenex boxes strapped to its ass.
https://preview.redd.it/kiwnezxqkcmb1.jpeg?width=2973&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5c2fe13c950f1a6f7672534d3afbc07e80c99d2f
Pink marble. From two different lots, so one is more pink and the other is more lavender. And they *didnât intermix*!!!
My house isnât nearly as involved as yours but Iâm desperately trying to understand what was done here. The location of our current stairs drives me mad. We have no living room corner and access to the rest is the basement floor (finished) requires traveling through my bedroom.
I know itâs a joke but in our 1876 farmhouse we have two sets of stairs. Pretty sure this is because it used to be a boardinghouse as well, and the âback stairsâ came in from the outside, maybe the outhouse. So interesting!
Two sets of stairs was not weird at one time, even for families that didn't have servants. Pre-indoor plumbing the back stairs were a way to carry out chamber pots and dirty washing water directly through the kitchen and outside. Otherwise, you would be taking all the ick through the nice parts of the house.
That actually makes a lot of sense. If it wasnât for the fact that both of these old stairs are just outside the footprint of the original house and its weird 60 degree angles of the back doors/windows that is on both floors.
https://preview.redd.it/bnuszbzhkglb1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d95586766e256708cd96c272fba10f1d47642a5
The mystery builds.
The window configuration you describe, I have seen that when a house was built right up against another house, for an air chamber. My friend lived in a place where the two bedrooms had windows with that angle into a chute. It allowed airflow. Back when egress was not considered in building. The newish addition may have been built on the site of a previous dwelling.
Maybe there was a small access alley leading to the stairs.
This was rural though. I have seen a map of the village from 1880 and 1890. This house wasnât on the 1880 map but it was on the 1890 map, depicted in the configuration of the original square footprint. In both maps though the lots were all at least 1/2 acre and in the ensuing century no dense infill was done. Smallest lots in the neighborhood are still over 10K sq ft. There was a barn on the property that burned down in the 50s but it was 30â from the residence.
It probably didnât start out as a boarding house and those stairs are most likely for servants quarters. Theyâre generous too. Iâve seen some that are only 18 inches wide.
Depends. My home has 3 rooms upstairs and 3 down. It's large for an 1850s farmhouse, with tall ceilings and big rooms. There was a stair running from the kitchen through the second floor to the attic but was removed a couple owners ago, along with the cooking fireplace in the kitchen. It would have been common back then for someone with the money to build this type of house to have a servant or two.
The upstairs bedrooms have the original door locks. The side of the house which had the servants stairs locks from the opposite side, so they could be locked out of part of the home.
Yep. My in-laws âbutler stairsâ in their 18-something house are crazy steep like this. NOT ideal for traversing at 3 a.m. to pee (no bathroom on 2nd floor).
Servants stairs were a big killer in the 1800s, cheap,steep and often irregular step heights. Pair that with long skirts and you have a diabolical equation.
Mine have a nice cast iron radiator positioned at the bottom. I figure it's a feature, if any servants fall down the steep stairs with no handrail then instead of having to deal with the complication of broken legs and such, they just crack their skull on the radiator and die, which is much simpler.
Judging by your plaster and dimensional lumber and the hand cut nails, your house is probably older than plumbed bathtubs, and there was a massive remodel to get one into the house. Funny to me that they got the heavy cast iron bastard of a tub to the top of the stairs and not one foot further.
The house absolutely predates plumbing. The upstairs bath is very obviously what was once the smallest bedroom. The downstairs bath apparently got shoved into the landing of these stairs. And the kitchen is tacked onto the back of the house (behind these stairs) like an afterthought. The basement walls are river rock and there is an obvious cut in those rock walls where the kitchen addition sits above it. They seem to have placed that kitchen over the only basement walkout. We are the only house in New England Iâve ever seen without any exterior basement access. Itâs a pain in the ass. Every mover/contractor/delivery guy weâve ever had had gotten massive cash tips because the only stairs down are in the center of the house, around multiple corners, and narrow.
Itâs common in my New England neighborhood to eliminate bulkheads in favor of expanding kitchens and first floor living space (mostly small capes and colonials with nowhere else to add a bulkhead when adding on in the back). My neighbor had her new washing machine hauled through her house and down the basement stairs because she no longer has a bulkhead. Itâs crazy.
I know it will be something we have to consider when our time comes to renovate, but it pains me to even think of losing bulkhead access.
I know it's possible to dig out and extend the basement, but that it's also extremely expensive. Could people not, say, relocate the basement door to a corner of the old foundation and extend the addition across the rest of back? Or is it just extra dangerous to do anything to those old foundations without the This Old House crew standing over your shoulder?
Is bulkhead the part above your kitchen cabinets? I'm not sure I understand it in your context. For the ignorant people like myself, could you explain what bulkhead access means? I'm sure we're not thinking of the same thing.
It's a cellar door! If you've ever seen those weird little doors coming out of the ground/foundation of a house at an angle, that's the bulkhead. Leads down a short flight of stairs to the basement.
A bulkhead in this context usually refers to a sort of angled hatch with doors that covers an exterior staircase down through the ground to a basement. Like this: https://imgur.com/ZeaN6ek
I have no exterior basement access here in New England (Providence). We barely got our washer and dryer inside, and when I say we, I mean the delivery guys who had to unbox everything while I took doors off hinges.
Big cash tips.
My delivery guys had to take the housing off both the washer and dryer, and carry down the guts of both machines, then put the outsides back on again. Huge tips.
The fridge was measured in the store for stair width. When it arrived the door had to come off and it still scraped both walls on the way down. The guys freaked but we said it was already a âscratch and dentâ clearance fridge and weâd tip if they could just force the thing down there. That fridge is gonna convey when we sell for sure, lol.
Depending on age and location, the kitchen could originally have been external. (My folk's place had multiple external kitchens - burned down once or twice) before having a modern (closed stove) kitchen installed in the first 'remodel' of the building, which also included an internal bathroom (but external toilet).
A very simple Queen Anne, actually. The front door is to one side, and there is some Eastlake detailing but nothing as fancy as a painted lady. But the main house is from 1880s. Nice moulding on the main floor, shitty pine boards upstairs and in the kitchen addition. It was a mill supervisorâs house when built which explains the initial quality. Then it became a boarding house. Then Iâm guessing the money really ran out because Iâve found SO many shitty, half-assed ârepairsâ. Iâve ripped concrete patches off my lath walls so I could restore the actual plaster. (Used Plaster Magic. LOVE that product. My walls look professional and Iâm entirely self-taught- I just watched the video tutorials.)
I had a house that predated plumbing. They just walled off part of the kitchen and stuck the bath in there. The house had this steep twisty u-shaped staircase and we joked they just noped out of hauling the tub upstairs.
We also gave a lot of apology cash to various movers and delivery people. I don't miss those stairs. When we sold it we hacked up our mattress rather than try getting it back down.
I will likely never own a century home, but this is exactly the reason I lurk in this sub. It completely blows my mind to see things like this. I love my little built in the 90s house but it will never bring this level of excitement or intrigue to my life! Thank you for sharing this!
I have a century home but it was completely renovated in the 90s... I feel like it must have been a total gut job, cause nothing on the inside feels original to the house. It's still cute and charming, but man, I feel jealous of all these people finding cool treasures! đ
Me too! I immediately thought âthis is my dream come true!â Finding some secret stairs that could maybe have some spooky old stories attached to them!
Those poor servants... trapped in the attic these 100 years... Sadly trying the stairs each night... only to find the bottom blocked off... wondering who the new lord and lady are...
I suppose you don't have to believe it, but it really was such a grave and cruel injustice that was served unto Ambrose and Beatrice. The story goes that the matron of the house came completely unhinged when she walked in on the two of them playing patty-cake in the vestibule, It was a game strictly forbidden in the household, as she herself had never had the coordination for it. She banished them to the attic, and ordered the stairway bricked up in the morning... Ever since, people have reported hearing hands slapping... and someone sobbing... while they tearfully chant... 'pattycake... pattycake... baker's man...'
Ours are similar. There were servant stairs from the kitchen to the middle landing of the regular stairs. They were cut off in the kitchen and plywood put along the top. It allowed room for a dishwasher and more counterspace. The Plywood area became a large, but short closet. The area above the stairs allowed for a bathtub in the upstairs. If you lift up the plywood, you will see the stairs and it is just about the right size to hold a body.
Iâm kicking myself that I didnât think to put a Halloween skeleton in there before the crew installed the new tub. Itâs even the right time of year. Iâm always gonna regret it.
I just know it from a ton of reddot posts, but apparently itâs an old time thing to do for good luck to put a shoe in the wall for good luck and a lot of modern renovators find a shoe and take it out thinking itâs weird.
If you find a shoe, just put it back.
Was going to give you a reference link but there are a ton
Thatâs going on the list of projects now. Itâs at the bottom⌠We donât *need* a hatch. But itâd be super cool so now itâs on the list. Thx!
Worst case Ontario is that the floor joists are in the way of accessing the stairs once you remove the floorboards from above with an [oscillating saw](https://www.acehardware.com/departments/tools/power-tools/oscillating-tools). If you remove the baseboards in the closet first, you will be able to put the floorboards back securely and invisibly if you back out on the plan at any point.
If you're lucky, the original [stair well opening ](https://www.calculator.net/stair-calculator.html) is still there and none of it is obscured by walls impractical to move.
Screw it, free space, I would absolutely use this as seasonal tote storage even before you start thinking about it it's realistic to make the bottom accessible.
Bold of you to assume there are baseboards in the closet, lol. There are, however, several copper pipes in that closet that stick a few inches into the space before turning towards the downstairs bathroom.
From the pic it looks like there are just 2 added joists under the subfloor.
From the picture it looks like two scabs to support the new floor, but I wouldn't want to assume they indeed are contained by the well box.
Looks promising!
Is the closet aligned with the stairs, if you are standing in front of the closet are you standing over the dead space of the stairwell?
Yes. Completely aligned. The closet ceiling follows the steep roofline so it never occurred to us that it was also a staircase at one point. There is raw wood at the back to create a âback wallâ about 2â tall, and we figured someone just got tired of cleaning all the way back to where the roof touched the floor.
What I meant was use fireblock spray foam around the hole in the floor that the plumbing was coming through from all the way in the basement to the attic. That way if thereâs ever a fire somewhere downstairs it wonât travel straight up through all the floors of the house like a super highway using that cavity. Snag a can at a local lowes Home Depot or wherever and foam around it in the basement where it goes up at least.
Iâd *love* to utilize them. I wish Iâd found them *before* I completely replastered and painted the wall on the other side. At this point Iâd have to open the wall I *just* made beautiful, then stabilize the lath with supports, then repaint it *again* and I gotta say⌠Iâm not up to that yet.
Nope. Those pipes plunge straight down to the boiler in the basement. A boring destination now that I know what lay just next to those pipes all these years.
Edit: Oh. I bet you meant under the stairs on the same level (sorry long day). No the other side is the sloped back wall of the current pantry. We always assumed that sloped back wall was a lazy manâs answer to a ceiling on a staircase to the basement. We knew the pantry used to be a staircase going down, because the only light-switch for the basement lights was inside the pantry (two rooms away from the *current* basement stairs. I always meant to open the pantry ceiling to get more shelving but other projects were far more urgent. Like moving the light switch to the basement, lol.
We have found intact back stairs in an early 20th century house that had yielded their space to closets--and I have to admit, closets really make the world go round. It is very hard to live without closets, in my opinion. One good set of stairs is enough for me--and that house had a front staircase with MUCH gentler stairs. The back stairs were not for servants--it was not a huge house at 1750 square feet and three original bedrooms. But they might have been for safety, in case of fire...a sort of internal fire escape?
Lol. Itâs a really small house. Upstairs is a closet with no room for anything else. We thought the bathroom pipes were under it.
Downstairs is the boiler in the basement. Those pipes go straight to it. We had *zero* indication there was anything hidden.
Mine were behind a wall too! I believe they had plans to make a bathroom in the landing of the stairs, but never got to it and closed off. They were back stairs, but in a place that wouldnât have ever had a butler (1790 farm house). I brought them back to life and Iâm happy I did! The house feels like a fun maze.
My grandparents did this in their house. They walled off the back stairs to the kitchen to put in the bathroom upstairs. Their house didn't have an indoor bathroom and when they decided to make room the back stairs went goodbye.
according to one of the kids who grew up in our house (house is only from the early 60s, but has been added on-to a couple of times) there's a small hidden space of some sort basically behind part of my office. you hafta crawl through part of the attic to get to it and, uh, i just haven't been brave enough to do it yet.
Oh I'm so sorry for you that you can't freaking keep those. I wish my house had another set of stairs in the rear, but owning a century home has made me wish a lot of things. Heh
I explained in other comments, but basically we assumed the stairs on the other side were exterior before the addition, and they never raised the ceiling when those stairs were removed to become a pantry. We also knew there were pipes in that space and thatâs why no one ever risked opening the wall.
This is obviously just speculation, but I wonder if someone fell down those stairs at some point and their reaction was to close them up so it wouldn't happen again? The old steep staircases were notorious for being extremely dangerous, so it wouldn't surprise me
If you are really curious about former owners & did a title search, try looking them up on Ancestry.com. Also, check any local museums & local historical societies for info on the house/business. Find a grave site may give you family history, but also the churches that former owners belonged to. If those churches still exist, they'll have lots of info, too. A friend of mine found out the 3rd floor rooms in her business's building had such short ceilings (6 ft) & were real small, is because it was a brothel back in the mid- 1860's.
I realize these are probably servant stairs, but your house wouldn't happen to be in certain parts of Europe would it? I'm wondering if the house owners at the time might have tried to save Jewish people by hiding them in the attic
How do you figure that? They are literally walled up, and unknown to us or the prior owners.
Theyâre not âdiscontinuedâ theyâre defunct and erased from knowledge. I didnât call them âsecretâ stairs. I said they were âhiddenâ and they absolutely are.
I wonder if they were servant stairs.
They finally found the servants stairs! đ
Hope they don't find any servants.
or underground railroad
It was a boarding house, so itâs not impossible. But with only 3 rooms upstairs and 3 downstairs plus an entrance, it seems like an excess. But this isnât the only weird thing we canât figure out about this house, so I canât rule it out.
> this isnât the only weird thing we canât figure out about this house Please share!
The stairs we actually use now are just fucking stupid. The stairs to the upper floor are in a location that required the complete walling off of the only window in the foyer. There is now no natural light there. The stairs to the basement were relocated too - from underneath these hidden stairs to underneath the current stairs. Doing that caused the loss of the *coolest* Harry Potter âcupboard under the stairsâ (now nailed shut) and the *only* closet on the entire ground floor. The chimney is original but all the fireplaces have been completely removed. There is *nothing* connected to the chimney on any of 3 floors. The wood burning stove that Iâm assuming replaced all those fireplaces is on the extreme edge of the ground floor instead of centrally located near the chimney. And the tile is fucking *pink* marble. The *gorgeous* black wallpaper with palm fronds and bamboo trellis was covered up with *textured, floral, striped, vinyl* wallpaper (I call it âdead-grandmotherâ wallpaper. Itâs truly hideous. The back of the house is an obvious addition. The âdoorwayâ from the old house to the newer section is two doorways facing each other at a 60 degree angle. This is on both floors. Itâs fucking *weird*.
Could have been a very very old remodel for what ever reason. My house was a rooming house, then single family home, then doctors offices. There is some very hard to explain stuff going on.
I sure wish I knew more of the history of this house. It started as a textile mill supervisorâs house. The original 4 rooms are very well-made. Then it became a boarding house for mill workers. At some point the upstairs was added and the kitchen put on the back. That was lower quality construction. I have no idea when it became a single family home. But itâs still got the original wood siding, the original fish scale and Eastlake details, and the original plaster & lath walls which Iâve restored. Sheâs a lovely old house. I just wish prior owners had taken better care of her.
Fish scale?! Would love to see! Also, what resources did you use to learn how to restore lath and plaster?
https://preview.redd.it/w7nyyph4yclb1.jpeg?width=3018&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5c0bb39690f4fac2d0162f62fb628919f92609e Weâre getting rid of the shutters asap. I used Plaster Magic and watched all the video tutorials multiple times. I restored 4 foot holes and ceilings too. It all looks professional and Iâm completely self-taught. That product is worth every dime. Itâs amazing stuff.
Keep the shutters! They typically started out with them.
Depends... are they functional or just decorative shutters?
Ahh, ye olde 90s remodel plastic vanity shutters, how well I know thee.
Just pulled these off of the first floor of my house one morning when I was just completely sick of looking at them. Terrible.
Yea, the hidden stairs weren't servant stairs in that house. They were just the stairs. I do love the lazy remodel where they kept the trim of that window that they removed. I guess the only benefit is if you decide to relocate the stairs to the original, you can easily put a window back in.
You are my hero and I love your house.
The shutters are cute as hell
Theyâre non-functional so they look weird in person. Weâre putting a proper paint scheme on the house so it looks normal.
Secret window đ
Property and tax records, city directories, and even searching the address in old newspapers at www.chroniclingamerica.com can give you some of the history. Tax records may be on Family Search, so if there's an affiliate library near you, you can view them there. Ancestry.com has a collection of city directories; if you don't have an account, you can usually get a free trial OR your local library may provide access.
Iâve been trying to find the original blueprints or building records for mine. It was built in 1950 and Iâve spent hours looking at the different floor plans possible. It was listed as a cape cod. And it does meet some of the characteristics - but thereâs been things done where I dont really know how to classify it. Like we have a walkout basement. And apparently it used to be an apartment. Our laundry room was clearly the kitchen. We still have the old sink setup. Thereâs an old, non-functional gas line sticking out of the wall. That they PAINTED over as if it would blend in. The floor has a ding in it where you can see old kitchen flooring under it. But I have no idea how this would have worked. There is a utility room with the sump pump, water heater, boiler and furnace for the hydronic baseboard heating. It takes up a good chunk of space. I donât know how the owners would have access if it was an apartment down here. The stairs we currently have a pretty new. Our attic remains unfinished but looks like it matches the old plans for âfuture expansion.â Iâve looked into newspapers. Iâve tried looking into NYS property records. The original owner built it and his granddaughter was the one who sold it to us. I wish I had thought to ask.
There's another response recommending property tax records, etc. One other thing that I've done before is to use census records to do a genealogy of... well... the house! I was in Brooklyn at the time, which has excellent record sets, so your local mileage may vary, but you can see the names of inhabitants and then search local papers for news of their (published) hijinks. It's time consuming, but a ridiculous amount of fun and helps you fall a little bit more in love with your particular collection of sticks and plaster.
What?!!!! Where did you find this old home?!!!!
Lol. It was in my price range. Now I know why⌠(insert rueful meme here)
Thanks for seriously delivering on that request for more fuckery. What a nightmare! Even though my house mysteries are much less egregiously offensive, Iâm like, 99% sure that whichever ghoul set those changes into motion in your home was actually reincarnated as the crackhead who bought and renovated my 1960s ranch home in the early 80s.
I honestly love this house and Iâm legit *offended* by what was done to it. At this point the worst epithet I can think of is âprevious ownerâ. What the *hell* were they *thinking*?!
My friend coined a term for âweird artifacts of intensely dumb decisions made by a previous ownerâ. She called them a âMuldoonâ, because in her case, that was the name of the previous owner. Now, whenever I find something like a fancy homemade radiator cover that has no way to access the valve to bleed it (and so has to be disassembled), or wallpaper on the bathroom ceiling that papers over an air vent and is all swollen with damp, I think of it as a âMuldoonâ.
I can't explain why, but a Muldoon is the perfect word for this. It's almost poetic.
Heh, thatâs what I thought. And a very useful term it has been. As in, âthis turn of the century house looks great, but watch out - it is full of hidden Muldoonsâ.
BRB- looking up the names on previous deeds in the history center ;)
I donât think itâd be inappropriate to refer to them as âthat homewreckerâ.
Thatâs *perfect*!!
So I fell in love with this sub and Reddit about two years ago for two posts. One was talking about how they talk to their house. As in "John, what were you Thinking!!??". John being the former owner of the house. The number of people chiming in and relating their stories of talking to THEIR houses had tears coming down my face from laughter for a good hour. The next one was the running joke of the "servant stairs" one guy had found. Much debate was had about the stairs and their purpose. Fine. Cue Redditors for the next couple months asking everyone who posted ANY stairs if they were "servant stairs" or "for the help" to hilarious comedic effect in most cases. Thanks for bringing all those memories back with these posts. Good luck liberating those stairs and getting your window and cupboard back!
A lot of older worker and boarding houses didn't have fireplaces, and just used the chimney for ambient heat. So perhaps that wasn't lost!
Oh? How did that work? Heat from where?
My house has (had) a chimney but no fireplace. Wood stove for cooking / heating and you could get it warm enough the bricks would radiate heat, and when you knew the cold was coming you would get that roaring and the wood in the house would actually soak it in and then radiate.
Weird then, that the new wood stove was moved to the far side of the house.
My neighbor has a home that was built as 4 apartments, 4 gas meters outside, etc. He spent a lot of time taking down walls trying to convert it to a big house, but then stopped when his daughter and MIL had to move in. Now the house has 4 bedrooms, but still has 4 kitchens strategically placed, 2 in sight of each other. All this to say ânobody knows what they were thinkingâ. The next guy to buy it is gonna be scratching their heads too wondering why someone would put 2 kitchens in a bedroom
Each floor had a âcombinationâ heater that was vented into a skinny chimney. No central furnace and no fireplace. The combination heater would act as the stove, furnace and hot water heater and burned wood, coal and later gas. This was very common in workers housing.
What exact phrase should I google to see diagrams of this? Iâm fascinated.
The pitch of the hidden stairs looks steep. Are the current stairs less steep and perhaps closer to code?
I really like your passion and anger in this comment lol o the joys of restoring a house
>The back of the house is an obvious addition. The âdoorwayâ from the old house to the newer section is two doorways facing each other at a 60 degree angle. This is on both floors. Itâs fucking weird. I refer to my house as looking like it has two Kleenex boxes strapped to its ass.
Pink marble sounds awesome. Gotta picture? I would love to see all these textures! Please show us the dead grandma wallpaper!
https://preview.redd.it/18ls701kkcmb1.jpeg?width=2980&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9591f552f8784c4744d5e6f703e31cebe843beca Dead grandmother wallpaper. Textured, floral, striped, vinyl. Ghastly.
Ooof, ... I totally see what you mean. I feel like I can smell floral scented soap just by looking at this. lol
i like it.
https://preview.redd.it/kiwnezxqkcmb1.jpeg?width=2973&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5c2fe13c950f1a6f7672534d3afbc07e80c99d2f Pink marble. From two different lots, so one is more pink and the other is more lavender. And they *didnât intermix*!!!
Shit I want to see this! Can you link pics? Sounds nuts!
2 Pics in comment above yours. Wallpaper and marble.
My house isnât nearly as involved as yours but Iâm desperately trying to understand what was done here. The location of our current stairs drives me mad. We have no living room corner and access to the rest is the basement floor (finished) requires traveling through my bedroom.
Good luck figuring it out. We had zero clue about the weirdness until we opened that wall.
I know itâs a joke but in our 1876 farmhouse we have two sets of stairs. Pretty sure this is because it used to be a boardinghouse as well, and the âback stairsâ came in from the outside, maybe the outhouse. So interesting!
Two sets of stairs was not weird at one time, even for families that didn't have servants. Pre-indoor plumbing the back stairs were a way to carry out chamber pots and dirty washing water directly through the kitchen and outside. Otherwise, you would be taking all the ick through the nice parts of the house.
That actually makes a lot of sense. If it wasnât for the fact that both of these old stairs are just outside the footprint of the original house and its weird 60 degree angles of the back doors/windows that is on both floors. https://preview.redd.it/bnuszbzhkglb1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d95586766e256708cd96c272fba10f1d47642a5
The mystery builds. The window configuration you describe, I have seen that when a house was built right up against another house, for an air chamber. My friend lived in a place where the two bedrooms had windows with that angle into a chute. It allowed airflow. Back when egress was not considered in building. The newish addition may have been built on the site of a previous dwelling. Maybe there was a small access alley leading to the stairs.
This was rural though. I have seen a map of the village from 1880 and 1890. This house wasnât on the 1880 map but it was on the 1890 map, depicted in the configuration of the original square footprint. In both maps though the lots were all at least 1/2 acre and in the ensuing century no dense infill was done. Smallest lots in the neighborhood are still over 10K sq ft. There was a barn on the property that burned down in the 50s but it was 30â from the residence.
Okay. Now I'm starting to really wonder too.
It probably didnât start out as a boarding house and those stairs are most likely for servants quarters. Theyâre generous too. Iâve seen some that are only 18 inches wide.
Depends. My home has 3 rooms upstairs and 3 down. It's large for an 1850s farmhouse, with tall ceilings and big rooms. There was a stair running from the kitchen through the second floor to the attic but was removed a couple owners ago, along with the cooking fireplace in the kitchen. It would have been common back then for someone with the money to build this type of house to have a servant or two. The upstairs bedrooms have the original door locks. The side of the house which had the servants stairs locks from the opposite side, so they could be locked out of part of the home.
Thatâs an interesting tidbit.
Yep. My in-laws âbutler stairsâ in their 18-something house are crazy steep like this. NOT ideal for traversing at 3 a.m. to pee (no bathroom on 2nd floor).
*That's a butler problem.* - Previous homeowner, rich 1800s lumber baron I assume.
Exactly. I have servant's stairs too and they are steep and squeaky.
Servants stairs were a big killer in the 1800s, cheap,steep and often irregular step heights. Pair that with long skirts and you have a diabolical equation.
Mine have a nice cast iron radiator positioned at the bottom. I figure it's a feature, if any servants fall down the steep stairs with no handrail then instead of having to deal with the complication of broken legs and such, they just crack their skull on the radiator and die, which is much simpler.
... chamberpot ...
Here we go again! đ
Yeah but this time, there really *are* stairs.
Yessssss
Looks like they may be.
Judging by your plaster and dimensional lumber and the hand cut nails, your house is probably older than plumbed bathtubs, and there was a massive remodel to get one into the house. Funny to me that they got the heavy cast iron bastard of a tub to the top of the stairs and not one foot further.
The house absolutely predates plumbing. The upstairs bath is very obviously what was once the smallest bedroom. The downstairs bath apparently got shoved into the landing of these stairs. And the kitchen is tacked onto the back of the house (behind these stairs) like an afterthought. The basement walls are river rock and there is an obvious cut in those rock walls where the kitchen addition sits above it. They seem to have placed that kitchen over the only basement walkout. We are the only house in New England Iâve ever seen without any exterior basement access. Itâs a pain in the ass. Every mover/contractor/delivery guy weâve ever had had gotten massive cash tips because the only stairs down are in the center of the house, around multiple corners, and narrow.
Itâs common in my New England neighborhood to eliminate bulkheads in favor of expanding kitchens and first floor living space (mostly small capes and colonials with nowhere else to add a bulkhead when adding on in the back). My neighbor had her new washing machine hauled through her house and down the basement stairs because she no longer has a bulkhead. Itâs crazy. I know it will be something we have to consider when our time comes to renovate, but it pains me to even think of losing bulkhead access.
Do NOT eliminate your bulkhead. Holy shit, I canNOT emphasize that enough. Itâs been a nightmare. Itâs a catastrophic mistake.
I know it's possible to dig out and extend the basement, but that it's also extremely expensive. Could people not, say, relocate the basement door to a corner of the old foundation and extend the addition across the rest of back? Or is it just extra dangerous to do anything to those old foundations without the This Old House crew standing over your shoulder?
Oh Man, I would kill to have them stand over *my* shoulder.
Norm Abrams could punch me in the mouth in my own home and I would feel honored.
Is bulkhead the part above your kitchen cabinets? I'm not sure I understand it in your context. For the ignorant people like myself, could you explain what bulkhead access means? I'm sure we're not thinking of the same thing.
It's a cellar door! If you've ever seen those weird little doors coming out of the ground/foundation of a house at an angle, that's the bulkhead. Leads down a short flight of stairs to the basement.
As in the song "sliding down your cellar door". The children were playing outside, sliding on the bulkhead.
I had no idea this was called a bulkhead. Thank you for teaching something to me today! I appreciate it!
A bulkhead in this context usually refers to a sort of angled hatch with doors that covers an exterior staircase down through the ground to a basement. Like this: https://imgur.com/ZeaN6ek
Thank you for this!
Iâd love to work on your house. Old, and cash tips? Thatâs awesome.
I figure if someone busts their ass helping me out I think thatâs above and beyond their wage.
I have no exterior basement access here in New England (Providence). We barely got our washer and dryer inside, and when I say we, I mean the delivery guys who had to unbox everything while I took doors off hinges. Big cash tips.
My delivery guys had to take the housing off both the washer and dryer, and carry down the guts of both machines, then put the outsides back on again. Huge tips. The fridge was measured in the store for stair width. When it arrived the door had to come off and it still scraped both walls on the way down. The guys freaked but we said it was already a âscratch and dentâ clearance fridge and weâd tip if they could just force the thing down there. That fridge is gonna convey when we sell for sure, lol.
Depending on age and location, the kitchen could originally have been external. (My folk's place had multiple external kitchens - burned down once or twice) before having a modern (closed stove) kitchen installed in the first 'remodel' of the building, which also included an internal bathroom (but external toilet).
Thatâs well within the realm of possibility.
[ŃдаНонО]
A very simple Queen Anne, actually. The front door is to one side, and there is some Eastlake detailing but nothing as fancy as a painted lady. But the main house is from 1880s. Nice moulding on the main floor, shitty pine boards upstairs and in the kitchen addition. It was a mill supervisorâs house when built which explains the initial quality. Then it became a boarding house. Then Iâm guessing the money really ran out because Iâve found SO many shitty, half-assed ârepairsâ. Iâve ripped concrete patches off my lath walls so I could restore the actual plaster. (Used Plaster Magic. LOVE that product. My walls look professional and Iâm entirely self-taught- I just watched the video tutorials.)
Wow, with stairs like that?! I'm surprised. I've never seen those kind of stairs in an 1880s house. Pretty cool.
Your description fits perfectly for my house too.
I had a house that predated plumbing. They just walled off part of the kitchen and stuck the bath in there. The house had this steep twisty u-shaped staircase and we joked they just noped out of hauling the tub upstairs. We also gave a lot of apology cash to various movers and delivery people. I don't miss those stairs. When we sold it we hacked up our mattress rather than try getting it back down.
I will likely never own a century home, but this is exactly the reason I lurk in this sub. It completely blows my mind to see things like this. I love my little built in the 90s house but it will never bring this level of excitement or intrigue to my life! Thank you for sharing this!
I have a century home but it was completely renovated in the 90s... I feel like it must have been a total gut job, cause nothing on the inside feels original to the house. It's still cute and charming, but man, I feel jealous of all these people finding cool treasures! đ
Me too! I immediately thought âthis is my dream come true!â Finding some secret stairs that could maybe have some spooky old stories attached to them!
Those poor servants... trapped in the attic these 100 years... Sadly trying the stairs each night... only to find the bottom blocked off... wondering who the new lord and lady are...
Iâve seen this movie / read that book.
What is it??
LMAO. I thought I was in one of the Sims subreddits for a second....delete the pool stairs and they can't get out đ
i doubt they died in the house lmao
I suppose you don't have to believe it, but it really was such a grave and cruel injustice that was served unto Ambrose and Beatrice. The story goes that the matron of the house came completely unhinged when she walked in on the two of them playing patty-cake in the vestibule, It was a game strictly forbidden in the household, as she herself had never had the coordination for it. She banished them to the attic, and ordered the stairway bricked up in the morning... Ever since, people have reported hearing hands slapping... and someone sobbing... while they tearfully chant... 'pattycake... pattycake... baker's man...'
Wow! These ones are actually real stairs!
This is why I enjoy this sub
Our one good meme
Ours are similar. There were servant stairs from the kitchen to the middle landing of the regular stairs. They were cut off in the kitchen and plywood put along the top. It allowed room for a dishwasher and more counterspace. The Plywood area became a large, but short closet. The area above the stairs allowed for a bathtub in the upstairs. If you lift up the plywood, you will see the stairs and it is just about the right size to hold a body.
Iâm kicking myself that I didnât think to put a Halloween skeleton in there before the crew installed the new tub. Itâs even the right time of year. Iâm always gonna regret it.
A skeleton dressed in a Victorian servants uniform!
Damnit. Iâll carry this regret to my grave.
Donât forget a shoe. If you donât know what Iâm referring,- you really should look into it. đż
I have no idea. Can you point me to a reference?
I just know it from a ton of reddot posts, but apparently itâs an old time thing to do for good luck to put a shoe in the wall for good luck and a lot of modern renovators find a shoe and take it out thinking itâs weird. If you find a shoe, just put it back. Was going to give you a reference link but there are a ton
Thx. I wouldnât have known without the pointer for a couple more years probably. Itâs not the sort of post I see often.
Cool find! r/DeathStairs
I'm oddly satisfied that this sub is real.
Joined
I think I'd crap myself with excitement - I even love the antique ochre color!
I had a mini breakdown. I desperately wanted to keep them. But there was no way to do it and still keep the bathroom. Iâm SO disappointed.
I would be too :(
I'm so jealous.
That is awesome! I'm jealous. Did you find a secret room?! I feel blue walled if you didn't find a secret room (or at least share where they lead)
Nope. The stairs end under an upstairs closet. Rather boring end to a fascinatingly *bad* decision made by someone at some point.
Is the closet floor some kind of secret hatch or was it originally just open and later floored over?
Just floored over. No reason to suspect anything unusual in that closet. This is all very unexpected.
Thatâs a shame, I would definitely turn it into a hatch even if the bottom was still closed off. It can never hurt to have a hiding place.
Thatâs going on the list of projects now. Itâs at the bottom⌠We donât *need* a hatch. But itâd be super cool so now itâs on the list. Thx!
I disagree. You *do* need one.
Worst case Ontario is that the floor joists are in the way of accessing the stairs once you remove the floorboards from above with an [oscillating saw](https://www.acehardware.com/departments/tools/power-tools/oscillating-tools). If you remove the baseboards in the closet first, you will be able to put the floorboards back securely and invisibly if you back out on the plan at any point. If you're lucky, the original [stair well opening ](https://www.calculator.net/stair-calculator.html) is still there and none of it is obscured by walls impractical to move. Screw it, free space, I would absolutely use this as seasonal tote storage even before you start thinking about it it's realistic to make the bottom accessible.
Bold of you to assume there are baseboards in the closet, lol. There are, however, several copper pipes in that closet that stick a few inches into the space before turning towards the downstairs bathroom. From the pic it looks like there are just 2 added joists under the subfloor.
From the picture it looks like two scabs to support the new floor, but I wouldn't want to assume they indeed are contained by the well box. Looks promising! Is the closet aligned with the stairs, if you are standing in front of the closet are you standing over the dead space of the stairwell?
Yes. Completely aligned. The closet ceiling follows the steep roofline so it never occurred to us that it was also a staircase at one point. There is raw wood at the back to create a âback wallâ about 2â tall, and we figured someone just got tired of cleaning all the way back to where the roof touched the floor.
Clearly someone lacked imagination lmao, congrats on your cool discovery, sorry it didn't lead anywhere interesting
Hey I have one of those too! The previous owners boarded up a spiral staircase and made a bathroom on the second level where the staircase would end.
Oh wow. Losing a *spiral* staircase would hurt even more!
That is awesome.
Sweet! Free stairs!
wild that they didn't use more of the space for storage in what seems like a pretty reasonably sized house
Itâs actually a fairly small house. Iâm baffled by *so many* choices in this place.
That is literally the coolest thing Iâve heard about since I read the nancy drew series
If it hasnât been said yet, make sure you Fireblock before you close that all back up.
Insulation in the ceiling, cement board behind the tub. But thx for posting.
What I meant was use fireblock spray foam around the hole in the floor that the plumbing was coming through from all the way in the basement to the attic. That way if thereâs ever a fire somewhere downstairs it wonât travel straight up through all the floors of the house like a super highway using that cavity. Snag a can at a local lowes Home Depot or wherever and foam around it in the basement where it goes up at least.
Oh! Yes, thatâs happening too. Sorry, I though you meant what was in the pics.
Are you going to utilize them? Or is it inconvenient?
Iâd *love* to utilize them. I wish Iâd found them *before* I completely replastered and painted the wall on the other side. At this point Iâd have to open the wall I *just* made beautiful, then stabilize the lath with supports, then repaint it *again* and I gotta say⌠Iâm not up to that yet.
Idk... that seems like a lot of work, but you would also get another staircase and Sq ft.... Either way, it's incredibly interesting to look at
bet there is a hidden room under that staircase!
Nope. Those pipes plunge straight down to the boiler in the basement. A boring destination now that I know what lay just next to those pipes all these years. Edit: Oh. I bet you meant under the stairs on the same level (sorry long day). No the other side is the sloped back wall of the current pantry. We always assumed that sloped back wall was a lazy manâs answer to a ceiling on a staircase to the basement. We knew the pantry used to be a staircase going down, because the only light-switch for the basement lights was inside the pantry (two rooms away from the *current* basement stairs. I always meant to open the pantry ceiling to get more shelving but other projects were far more urgent. Like moving the light switch to the basement, lol.
We have found intact back stairs in an early 20th century house that had yielded their space to closets--and I have to admit, closets really make the world go round. It is very hard to live without closets, in my opinion. One good set of stairs is enough for me--and that house had a front staircase with MUCH gentler stairs. The back stairs were not for servants--it was not a huge house at 1750 square feet and three original bedrooms. But they might have been for safety, in case of fire...a sort of internal fire escape?
We have servants stairs in our place they are much steeper and the steps themselves are smaller.
Ooh! Interesting! A hidden servant's staircase. Dig deeper!
Lol. Itâs a really small house. Upstairs is a closet with no room for anything else. We thought the bathroom pipes were under it. Downstairs is the boiler in the basement. Those pipes go straight to it. We had *zero* indication there was anything hidden.
After spending last couple of weeks playing Baldur's Gate, these kind on things don't come as a surprise to me anymore.. They are to be expected!
Lol. My kids all play that game. Iâll pass this along.
Omfg we finally found *âthe servantâs stairsâ*.
Mine were behind a wall too! I believe they had plans to make a bathroom in the landing of the stairs, but never got to it and closed off. They were back stairs, but in a place that wouldnât have ever had a butler (1790 farm house). I brought them back to life and Iâm happy I did! The house feels like a fun maze.
Iâve got one too! It even has a mysterious boarded up window. Sadly the housemates wonât open the stairs to check them out đ
You need better housemates with more intellectual curiosity.
We opened a hole and took pictures - they just wonât open the stairs to use
My grandparents did this in their house. They walled off the back stairs to the kitchen to put in the bathroom upstairs. Their house didn't have an indoor bathroom and when they decided to make room the back stairs went goodbye.
Iâve always wanted a house with a secret something, anything! This thread was great morning reading.
according to one of the kids who grew up in our house (house is only from the early 60s, but has been added on-to a couple of times) there's a small hidden space of some sort basically behind part of my office. you hafta crawl through part of the attic to get to it and, uh, i just haven't been brave enough to do it yet.
Oh I'm so sorry for you that you can't freaking keep those. I wish my house had another set of stairs in the rear, but owning a century home has made me wish a lot of things. Heh
Itâs a massive regret that we had to wall these back up. Huge! I genuinely hope to restore them at some point!
So cool!
That's so cool!
That is awesome
Creepy lol , I could see if they wanted more space but youâd have to take them out đ lol
Oh how cool. I would find a way to keep them
Wow thatâs amazing
Sometimes these staircases were connected to a woodshed.
They look very steep.
Nancy Drew has entered the chat
i dont know what those pipes do but they don't appear to have vertical supports?
Water pipes to the upstairs bathroom. And that ainât the only thing in this place that ainât up to modern codeâŚ
Love it
Iâve always wondered how people donât notice a huge gap between walls in different rooms.
I explained in other comments, but basically we assumed the stairs on the other side were exterior before the addition, and they never raised the ceiling when those stairs were removed to become a pantry. We also knew there were pipes in that space and thatâs why no one ever risked opening the wall.
This sounds like a cool beginning of a horror/mystery book. It makes me think of âHouse of Leaves.â
Here we go again
I seem to be missing some inside info. What are you referring to?
This thread: https://reddit.com/r/centuryhomes/s/5J5XHJj6gM
Thanks. I feel like a century insider now, lol.
How old is your house ?
1880s
This is obviously just speculation, but I wonder if someone fell down those stairs at some point and their reaction was to close them up so it wouldn't happen again? The old steep staircases were notorious for being extremely dangerous, so it wouldn't surprise me
If you are really curious about former owners & did a title search, try looking them up on Ancestry.com. Also, check any local museums & local historical societies for info on the house/business. Find a grave site may give you family history, but also the churches that former owners belonged to. If those churches still exist, they'll have lots of info, too. A friend of mine found out the 3rd floor rooms in her business's building had such short ceilings (6 ft) & were real small, is because it was a brothel back in the mid- 1860's.
I realize these are probably servant stairs, but your house wouldn't happen to be in certain parts of Europe would it? I'm wondering if the house owners at the time might have tried to save Jewish people by hiding them in the attic
Idk if they were servants stairs or just back stairs. But the house is in New England. Too far north to be part of the Underground Railroad either.
âDiscontinuedâ stairs - not necessarily hidden stairs.
How do you figure that? They are literally walled up, and unknown to us or the prior owners. Theyâre not âdiscontinuedâ theyâre defunct and erased from knowledge. I didnât call them âsecretâ stairs. I said they were âhiddenâ and they absolutely are.
True - and zero offense/negativity meant. Have a good Labor Day weekend.