20 Victorian Home Features We Should Seriously Bring Back

Upper-middle-class homes, built from about 1850 onward and common by 1880, contained a butler’s pantry, a hallway between the kitchen and dining room. Floor-to-ceiling cupboards, lockable cabinets called silver safes, and lead- or copper-lined sinks enabled servants to prepare each guest’s meal separately and then wash the dishes away from the noise and haze of the kitchen. Very convenient, provided you were on the side of the door being served. No such luxury existed for the working-class family in a cottage.

As middle-class homes were outfitted with indoor plumbing during the Victorian sanitary movement of the 1880s-1910s, which championed clean and hygienic living spaces, the clawfoot bathtub rose to popularity. These cast-iron tubs were coated in a vitreous porcelain enamel and lifted off the floor by ornamental ball-and-claw feet, not only to allow for easy cleaning below, but also to prevent floorboards from rotting.

Ceiling roses, the gypsum plaster medallions popular between the 1840s and 1890s, are often called “soot traps” for old gas lamps. Look it up, and you’ll find only half of this is true. They were used to give classical decoration around chandeliers and their gas-powered cousins, known as gasaliers, and they offered a non-flammable surface beneath hot gas fixtures and made repainting simple once the soot had settled. Historians now see the soot-trap story as an oversimplified legend — the medallions were primarily decorative, but their fire-resistant plaster did help shield ceilings from gaslamp heat and residue.

Bay windows were a common feature of Italianate and Queen Anne houses built between the 1860s and 1900, jutting out from the foundation and providing a view of the world in several directions simultaneously. They should not be confused with an oriel, a type of bay window that projects from an upper floor instead of rising from the ground. A cabinetmaker could build a bench into the bay’s nook, often with a lid that hid space for bedding and other sleeping materials.

Two Victorian scullery sinks might look virtually identical because they’re both made of fireclay porcelain. However, they’ll differ in one crucial way. From the 1870s to the 1900s, the Belfast sink featured an integrated overflow opening called a weir, presumably because there was plenty of fresh water in Belfast. But the London Butler sink did not feature this because water wasn’t so readily available in London. So it’s the same heavy sink from the same period, but you can see where it was meant to go based on the overflow.

From the 1870s to the 1890s, pocket doors were very popular in American and British townhouses. These doors slide completely away into a slot or cavity built inside the wall. Early floor-runner tracks had a tendency to jam, but by the 1880s, trolley hardware mounted at the top eliminated this problem. A pocket door can effectively shut off a parlor when closed, keeping in the warmth of the fireplace, as well as sound. When open, the entire room was available for entertaining, no door swing required.

A Victorian house that was built between the 1840s and the 1890s may well have had two parlors rather than one: a formal, front parlor for receiving visitors, and an informal back parlor where the family lived and ate. These were often connected by wide archways or pocket doors. When the doors were closed, each room maintained its own level of warmth and noise; when they were opened, the rooms became one large room for entertaining.

Typical urban Victorian houses (1870-1900) tended to be built very near the street and other properties, leaving very little privacy on the ground floor. Colored stained glass and straight geometric leadlight windows, made from smaller pieces of glass joined together with lead, were often used for panels and windows (front door, sidelights, overhead). This would allow light to flood the stairwell and hallways while blocking the outside view. Much of this material was bought from mail-order catalogs as opposed to being salvaged from existing churches.

If someone pulled a lever in the parlor, tensioned copper wire would run through wall cranks and lead tubing to a brass bell in the kitchen. That mechanical system connected to a servants’ bell board, a common home feature in the mid-to-late 1800s that did not rely on any electricity. The swinging pendulum on the wooden indicator board indicated which room was calling. It was essentially a household notification system powered by wire and spring.

The “encaustic” in encaustic tiles comes from a method of painting using heated wax. Wax has nothing to do with the tiles. The method that made them was patented by British tilemaker Samuel Wright in 1830; English manufacturer Herbert Minton began to produce them in bulk in the 1840s. Liquid colored clays were inlaid into a tile’s body before it was fired in a kiln. That means the pattern exists in the fired clay and can last decades in muddy Victorian hallways.

The cold larder, a room constructed on the north or east side (so as to avoid sunlight), with screened vents allowing cooler outside air to circulate within, was a standard part of most homes right up until the 1920s. The thick marble or slate shelves were sufficient to keep meat, dairy products, and vegetables cold. There would be no ice inside, as the icebox was for that.

The walls in Victorian houses were lime plaster over thin wooden strips called lath. A simple hammer and nail could crack or crumble the entire wall. This issue was circumvented by the invention of picture rails, narrow wooden moldings fixed 12 to 24 inches below the ceiling. Brass S-hooks and decorative cords would be placed on the picture rail, allowing art, mirrors, and tapestries to be displayed without damaging the wall. The gallery wall existed; the nail holes didn’t have to.

In 1877, English inventor Frederick Walton created Lincrusta, a thick, embossed wallcovering of oxidized linseed oil, wood flour, and resin, pressed into a canvas backing; the result was washable and paintable. In 1887, English inventor Thomas Palmer created Anaglypta using the same process, but with paper pulp. These were commonly applied below the dado rail, a horizontal molding running partway up the wall, on stairs and corridors, as protection for the plasterwork against scrapes and bumps.

A lot of these Victorian interior doors also had a hinged glass panel, known as a transom, above them that was designed to be opened using either an iron lever or push-rod. By opening the transom without opening the door, you could vent stale air and let heat escape from what were often dark hallways, drawing light from the adjoining room. Transoms were not just decorative ornaments placed atop a doorway; they were functional ventilation systems.

From the 1830s to the 1890s, the solid-wall Georgian and Victorian houses had wooden panel shutters, which would fold back into boxes on either side of the window when not needed, and would swing out across the glass at night or in a storm. They created an insulating pocket of air, blocking out cold drafts, street noise, and the glaring sun, and were never the fixed, decorative kind that you see bolted onto the outside of modern buildings.

With the halls, staircases, and dining areas constantly being hammered by chairs, drenched cloaks, and filthy boots, builders took action and installed wainscoting: either tongue-and-groove beadboard or wooden paneling within a frame that ran 36 to 48 inches high from the bottom of the plastered walls. The wainscot kept the wall free of scrapes, held back rising moisture, and gave extra insulation that the plaster simply couldn’t provide, with a chair rail capping it off at the top.

When one walked in the outer front door of a Victorian town or rowhouse built between 1840 and 1900, one would walk into a small, enclosed vestibule, or entry space, leading to an inner glazed door. The double-door system kept out cold, damp, street air from the heated parlors and allowed visitors to wipe off their coats and boots. It was a sort of airlock, even if that word hadn’t been invented yet.

In the late 1880s through the 1890s, when central basement boilers made the fireplace in every room antiquated, foundries began casting radiators of cast iron with ornate scrolls on them. Since cast iron holds its heat, the radiator continued to give off a little bit of heat when the boiler turned off, mitigating drafts in tall Victorian homes. The radiators ran on steam or hot water because electricity wasn’t yet an option.

From the 1850s to around 1900, a fireplace was a fixture of a Victorian bedroom or parlor. The fire frame was made of cast iron that held inserts of glazed ceramic tile with an Art Nouveau or botanical design. Cast iron was an efficient radiator of heat, and the glazed tiles were easy to wipe clean when speckled with ash and also reflected light. Many late Victorian fireplaces burned coal or manufactured gas piped into homes, known as town gas, not wood.

Underneath the wall-to-wall carpeting in some older Victorian homes, you’ll discover the original hardwoods. Between the 1870s and 1900s, carpenters laid down solid oak, walnut, or mahogany tongue-and-groove wood blocks in herringbone, chevron, or Versailles patterns surrounded by a decorative border. These were not laminated or veneered, but rather solid pieces of wood. That’s why they survived for over a century beneath someone else’s carpet.

This content was created with the help of AI.