Time Capsule House For Sale

[hydralique]

Siding . . .

How about aluminum siding instead of vinyl siding? This is a scene from Tin Men, one of my fav movies. How could the homeowner say no if they're gonna be in Life Magazine?

 

[petek]

Never heard of that movie and now I want to see it

 

[golittlesport]

Matt

We did have a "PGH bathroom" in the basement! Although some folks only had a toilet with a shower curtain around it in the basement, we were fancy and had it closed off and with a door. It had a lavatory sink and even a shower, which wasn't much more than a six-inch high cement retaining wall around the drain on the cement floor, but we had two bathrooms in the house, which was more than most of our neighbors had.

I loved our basement -- about half of it was wood paneled and had indoor/outdoor carpet and was the kids' playroom, the other half was the utility room -- with a Westy Laundromat, Frigidaire Filtrator dryer, twin cement laundry tubs, old white porcelain-top kitchen table, gas furnace and water heater, and the stove and refrigerator I mentioned previously. The utility room was my favorite room in the house.

 

[fido]

Do you think someone will buy it just to tear out the existing decor? I was looking at other houses on that site and there are plenty of much cheaper houses if you were looking for a "project".

 

[frigilux]

Someone with money built that gorgeous house in '59. The rooms look very spacious for that time period, and the kitchen has a lot of deluxe features. Wonderful!

 

[polkanut]

Rich,

What you refer to as a "Pittsburgh bathroom" was also very common in the Milwaukee suburbs too.  My great-aunt and uncle built their home in 1962, in Oak Creek which is on Milwaukee's south side.  Great-uncle Wally put in the same type of bathroom in their basement and it became his while Great-Aunt Elberta used the one upstairs.  They lived there until 1988 when they moved back to Wausau to be closer to family as they had no children.

 

[mattl]

Ok, I'm not exactly sure what a Pittsburgh bath is.  Is it just a toilet and possible a sink in the corner of a basement?  How was the plumbing tied in?

 

Our main waste line that went to the septic when the house was built is about 5' above the basement floor.  Later when the sewers came in we had a second line going out to the sewers that came in at floor level put in.  This allowed us to frame up and install a 1/2 bath in the basement with a wall hung toilet.  This also served the laundry area so it could drain into the sanitary sewer instead of the storm sewer as it was originally.

 

 

[rustyspaatz]

"I loved our basement -- about half of it was wood paneled and had indoor/outdoor carpet and was the kids' playroom, the other half was the utility room -- with a Westy Laundromat, Frigidaire Filtrator dryer, twin cement laundry tubs, old white porcelain-top kitchen table, gas furnace and water heater, and the stove and refrigerator I mentioned previously. The utility room was my favorite room in the house. "

Sounds Familiar. Checking out other peoples basements was kind of like searching buried treasure. What kind of washer did they have. How was it hooked up. Did they have a sudssaver?

Isn't if funny, that generation put an UN-livable living room filled with knick-knacks and asbestos laden furnishings, all smothered in poly-vinyl, which made it doubly untouchable, on a Pedestal...
while their kids were perfectly happy hanging out in the basement.

The whole concept of a "living room" is so passe'. Why would anyone waste their time creating such a wasted space. It's more the 'delusion room' because, that is really what your saying to people if you have one.

The basement was real. The garage was second fav. place, especially as I got into teen years.

 

[polkanut]

Matt,

It is usually a homemade ½ or ¾ bathroom built by the homeowners themselves.  In my great-aunt and uncle's case they did all the work, paid for all the fixtures in cash, and without a building permit.  He busted out the cement and tied into the sanitary sewer, and also tapped into the water piping.  They were fortunate that they had their own well for all but the last 1 ½yrs that they lived there.  They did it this way to avoid having their property assessment go up.  Uncle Wally also insulated their garage and installed a gas wall furnace because he did auto body work on the side.  This too was done under the radar of the local property inspector.

 

[whirlcool]

My uncle had a housein Claredon Hills that they built in 1960. It had one of those "Pittsburgh" baths in the basement. The basement was only 50% of the way completed.
I never saw anyone use it except when they were having a family gathering and only the toilet & sink was used. They also had a kitchen down there in the finished part of the basement.

The downstairs kitchen was mainly used during large family gatherings. There also was a built in bar, so everyone who came spent their visit down there. I still remember the smell of turkey or ham baking down there.

Their living room upstairs was some kind of Italian Provincinal and every piece of fabric was covered in "custom made breathable plastic". It was called breathable because when you sat on it, air was pushed out the vent holes. Your skin still stuck to the plastic. I remember my mother mentioning how hideously expensive those plastic covers were. If you went into the "upstairs" living room you had better take your shoes off first because the carpet was white and deep sculpted.

 

[polkanut]

That gold Roper gas range is exactly like the one my Grandma Baumann got circa 1972-73.  She also received a non frost-free Frigidaire Cycla-Matic in shaded gold at the same time.  The fridge is still going strong, and is my sister's daily driver.  She loves it.

 

 

Allen, instead of "Italian Provincial" that whole decorating concept should be called "Italian Pretentious" or "Italian Tacky". 

 

[whirlcool]

I know it was strange for that particular aunt & uncle to have that. My uncle was a former career Army man and they had lived all over the world. Usually it was the Italian's that had living rooms like that. That was the only room in the house decorated in that manner. I would say the rest of the house was just plain old contemporary for the time. No mid century modern or anything like that.

My aunt is still around, the last survivor of my Dad's family. She's in a semi assisted care condo building and still gets around fine at age 92. She's the one who got a computer science degree when she was 78. So she knows her way around a computer. She's also urging us to buy a retirement condo now rather than wait until we need it. Because she said "If you don't have immediate need, it's cheaper. They really stick it to you when you have something happen and then need it right now."

 

[circlew]

That's a fantastic house, and it reminds me a lot of the house my mom's cousin Fannie Lou had, also built in '59. As she passed last Dec., her son and daughter sold it this past August. Another house that mom's cousin Wilmer and his wife Doris lived in was similar.

While the house itself is great, the decor is not at all my taste. I agree the drapes, kitchen floor and red carpet should be dumpster food. The basement paneling can also go away, as it doesn't appear to be real wood.

I wish there was a better picture of the built-in Westinghouse oven. I've never seen one like that in Coppertone before.

Hopefully someone who will appreciate this home will become the next owner!

 

[sudsmaster]

I'm a little surprised at all that natural wood cabinetry in the kitchen and dining room. I tend to associate that look more with the late 60's and early 70's, so I'm wondering if it's original, or an upgrade. Or maybe the original refinished?

 

[sudsmaster]

Basement kitchens...

Out here most homes don't have basements, so the second kitchen would go into an enclosed patio. It has the secondary advantage of keeping more cooking odors out of the house.

 

[rustyspaatz]

Sudsy
"I'm a little surprised at all that natural wood cabinetry in the kitchen and dining room. I tend to associate that look more with the late 60's and early 70's, so I'm wondering if it's original, or an upgrade. Or maybe the original refinished? "

Those are reversed. In the 50s and early 60 we had solid wood cabinets, solid wood with veneer, and plywood with wood veneer.

By the time late 60s and early 70s rolled up to the curb, the cabinet industry cheapened itself like a hooker with a meth problem.

There were:
hollow core cabinet doors (1/8" ply wood on a 1x1 frame,
slab of particle board with real wood veneer,
slab of particle board with Formica veneer,
and just simply- slab of particle board with some cheap paint and grooves routed into to resemble French provincial paneling.

The success of the mobile home industry and a growing number of new homes that were larger overall, necessitated cutting back in some areas. Aa a result, cabinets and millwork in general took a hit for the team.
the best one had to be particle board mill work, like dust boards, covered with dark brown contact paper.

A relative built a home in 1972. It had dark brown PLASTIC, ranch profile mop boards.

 

[NYCWriter]

"Pittsburgh bathrooms" ...

... were developed out of necessity in the 1940s-1960s in households in steel towns. Most of those homes, even if they were relatively generous in size (classic Arts and Crafts "four square" homes), still had only one bathroom (usually upstairs with the bedrooms). And most of the homes (in hilly Pennsylvania) had basements that were at least partially exposed at the side or back, with an outside entrance.

Steelworkers come home from work absolutely filthy. Most wives wouldn't let them into the house until they stripped down and showered in the basement.

And like "golittlesport" described above, that "bathroom" was often little more than just a 6-inch retaining wall with a drain and a shower head. Maybe a toilet if you were lucky. And if you were really fancy, a sink (which would have been redundant in most "Pittsburgh bathrooms" because they were usually constructed right next to the laundry tubs for the washer and dryer).

 

[circlew]

Not all cabinets from the late 60's and early 70's were junk; it just depended on how much you had (or wanted) to spend. Companies such as Grabill, Mutschler, Coppes-Nappanee, Rutt and others made very high quality custom cabinets.

The "junk" was mostly confined to "stock" type cabinets, sold off the floor at lumberyards.

 

[NYCWriter]

Rusty ...

UGH you are so right!!!

Early '60s was the last of the really well-built kitchen cabinetry.

Our split-level "model home of the future" was constructed in 1967, and the kitchen and bathroom cabinets were an absolute joke: particleboard covered in woodgrain vinyl adhesive.

And yes, this 1959 home was definitely built by an affluent homeowner. This was someone's dream home. 1900 square feet, for all but the "wealthy" households, was considered a "big" house in 1959. And a 21x12 living room was a luxury that was virtually unheard of.

 

[perc-o-prince]

Endicott-Johnson shoes, once the world's largest shoema

Worked for them from when they took over Liberty Shoes in Buffalo in about 1984 until they sold my Danvers MA location out to Payless in 1991. I started with Liberty Shoes in 1979, so they always kept my seniority from then.

They really knew how to take care of their employees back then!

Chuck