Aaron Usher
Left The 1846 plan for Roseland Cottage, Woodstock, Connecticut, shows privies at the end of the ell, and a ”bathing room” close to the source of hot water in the kitchen. right The 1882 plans for
The first improvements materialized in finer homes by the early nineteenth century as the freestanding outdoor privies of the eighteenth century gave way to indoor privies that provided an important measure of convenience. Of necessity situated in an out-of-the-way corner of the house at the end of an ell or tucked into a back service area, indoor privies such as the original single-hole privy in the ell at the 1807 Rundlet-May House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, offered indoor comfort but still required a cesspit or vault that had to be emptied periodically. In 1846, Joseph C. Wells’s plan for Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut, included two privies, a two-seater for servants and a three-seater for the family’s use, back-toback in the wood house at the end of the ell. More remarkable was the “bathing room” with a built-in bathtub, which Wells designed just off the first floor “chamber” (bedroom). This, and an adjacent “wash room” (laundry), backed up to the kitchen, the source of the hot water that had to be hand carried to the point of use. As late as 1882, when architects Hartwell and Richardson began renovations to the 1793 Lyman Estate mansion in Waltham, Massachusetts, floor plans of the existing structure show a two-hole privy at the very end of the side ell for ser10
Historic New England Summer 2010
the Lyman Estate, Waltham, Massachusetts, labeled this room a “Toilet.” Many euphemisms refer to the room in which the toilet is located, and these names shift periodically.
vants’ use. Three more individual toilet facilities (presumably for the family) existed closer to the family living space but in the service wing of the house. These might have been privies but were more likely very early water closet toilets, which came into broader use after the 1850s. (Water rates in Boston in 1868 included an additional $5 annual fee “charged to each dwelling-house, in which a water closet or bathing tub is used.”) To modernize and expand the mansion in the latest Queen Anne mode, the architects provided three up-to-date bathrooms, all equipped with water closet toilets. Tellingly, all three occupied locations in the floor plan at or very near the locations of the earlier facilities. To open the space for the mansion’s graceful and dramatic two-story stairhall, the architects removed a service stair and passages and relocated an existing water closet to a one-story extension below the sweeping staircase and next to a side door to the family’s beloved gardens. The resulting “Toilet,” containing a marble-topped sink and a water closet with an overhead cistern, remains as it was in 1882, complete with pull chain, arched toilet paper niche, and a wooden board seat on the Dalton-Ingersoll “No. 1 Burmah” toilet. A fully-developed second floor “Bath,” located in space newly-created when the side ells of the house were raised to