Long ago, no one knew the dangers of asbestos, as is evident in this 1909 advertisement for asbestos table pads.
An 1893 advertisement for a novelty telephone (complete with wires to run between parties), guaranteed to work like a real phone up to one mile.
In the United States, prior to toilet paper becoming commercially available in the mid 1800s, people would often clean themselves using rags and corn cobs. In 1857, an inventor from New Jersey, named Joseph Gayetty (pictured below at an older age), began production of his patent for sheets of medicated paper to be used in the “water closet”, an early term for early indoor plumbing bathrooms. Indoor plumbing with flush toilets began appearing in the United States as early as the 1850s.
Other companies jumped on board and began producing their own toilet paper, but Geyetty’s was the top selling brand from 1857 through 1890.
Gayetty toilet paper was sold in packs of 500 sheets at 50 cents per pack. It contained aloe as a lubricant and was marketed as an anti-hemorrhoid medical product. Each perforated sheet contained a watermark of Gayetty’s name.
One of the first electric vacuum cleaners, 1906. It weighed nearly 300 pounds.
Imagine buying a house from a mail order catalog, having it shipped to you in pieces, and you have to build it yourself from its very foundation.
From 1908 through 1940, people could order Sears, Roebuck & Co. “kit homes” from their mail order catalog. Shipped by boxcar, each kit contained thousands of pre-cut house pieces. Pieces were numbered and blueprints were drawn with the novice homebuilder in mind, listing each numbered piece and its precise placement. A 75-page instruction manual was included.
Sears, Roebuck & Co. promised that “a man of average abilities could assemble a Sears kit home in about 90 days.” No detail was overlooked, as both the blueprints and manual instructed the homeowner as to the correct spacing of the 750 pounds of nails included. About 50% of kit homes were assembled by the homeowner while the other 50% were assembled by professional builders.
Sears kit homes were made with the finest materials including top-grade southern yellow pine for framing pieces and solid maple for kitchen and bath floors. Items needed for plumbing and electricity could be purchased separately, also from the Sears catalog, in which homeowners could either try to run pipes and wiring throughout the home themselves or hire professionals.
Over the course of 32 years, Sears offered more than 370 kit home designs, including bungalows, colonials, capes, prairies and more. A combination of increasingly complex house designs, the Great Depression, and federally sponsored mortgage programs were the three primary reasons why Sears closed their kit home department in 1940.
The images below consist of:
-Four pages of kit homes from the 1908 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog, the first year kit homes were available for sale.
-A page from a 75-page instruction manual.
-A kit home reference book, showing the Magnolia model, held up in front of an actual Magnolia model kit home. The Magnolia model was only available for sale between 1918 and 1922.
-A model 303 kit home from 1910 and the same model kit home as depicted in the catalog. The model 303 is considered the rarest of Sears kit homes.
Today, a cluttered room is considered just that…clutter. In the late 19th century, however, clutter was considered decorative, and not only that but the more clutter you had the wealthier you appeared.
The 1890s saw a surge in what is now referred to as “Victorian clutter”. It was a time of extravagance. The more items you had on display, the more money it appeared you had to purchase such items. The room in a home most notable for Victorian clutter was the parlor. This is because other rooms, such as the bedrooms and kitchen, were rarely seen by outsiders. The first room usually seen by a visitor was the parlor, and the homeowner wanted to make the best first impression, an impression of wealth.
Though you may perceive the pictures below as clutter, this was considered attractive in the 1890s and was a look which was strived for. This look carried over into the first decade of the 20th century, slowly fading out of favor for more spacious, airy rooms during the 1910s.
This ad from 1908 promotes the membership of women to swastika clubs, in which women who joined this particular club, according to the ad, would receive this silver souvenir spoon with, as the ad states, “the weird swastika cross” as well as the two lamps pictured below it.
At this time, the swastika was a symbol of peace and good fortune throughout many countries. It wasn’t until it was adopted by the Nazis that it lost its positive symbolism.
Prior to the electric stove we now take for granted (which didn’t rise in popularity until the late 1920s), kitchen stoves in the 19th and early 20th centuries used wood or coal for fuel.
How would someone be able to tell if the stove was hot enough or if it needed more fuel to raise the temperature? The answer was simple but dangerous. They would measure the heat with their hands.
The stove was hot enough to use if one could hold their hand inside it for 15 to 20 seconds. If they could keep their hand inside for more than 30 seconds, more fuel needed to be added to raise the temperature. The less amount of time one could keep their hand in the stove before feeling a burning sensation, the hotter it was.
Wood and coal burning stoves spewed smoke and soot everywhere. The soot blackened carpets, curtains and walls. Cleaning the mess was a daily chore for families which could take many hours, unless they could afford to hire someone to do it for about $1.50 a day.
The picture below is of two sisters cooking in their Wisconsin home in 1897.
This narrow house at 44 Hull Street in Boston, originally known as the Spite House but now also known as the Skinny House, was built around 1885. It is 1,166 square feet and measures 10 feet wide by 30 feet long. Why is this house so narrow and why is it built right up against another?
The exact history of the Spite House is not entirely known. According to historians, two brothers inherited land from their recently deceased father. One of the brothers had been away for some time. When he eventually arrived back in Boston, he found that his brother had built a large home for himself which took up most of the land that was supposed to be divided evenly among them. Out of spite, the houseless sibling built a small home on the remaining inherited property, flush up against his brother’s home, blocking windows from receiving sunlight and obstructing his brother’s view of the harbor. The other building in the photos below did not exist at the time so there would have been an excellent view of the harbor prior to the Spite House being built.
History of the brothers is unknown so there is no information as to their relationship with one another prior to and following the Spite House being built.
There are a number of other spite houses throughout the country but none as well known as this one in Boston.
Paint companies of the 19th century produced color samples which customers could take home to best decide what color they wished to paint a house or room. Unlike samples today which are printed on paper, color samples of the 19th century were made of actual chips of paint. In the 1890s, Sherwin-Williams printed literature containing popular colors for home exteriors, such as the example below, complete with a ring of popular exterior paint chip color samples.
