On 4/4/2016 12:42 PM, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
> On Monday, April 4, 2016 at 10:46:06 AM UTC-4, Janet B
> wrote:
>> the basement under the house where I grew up was a scary place that
>> children didn't want to go. It was lit by a light bulb in each room.
>> You had to be brave to travel to the center of the room and pull the
>> string to light the bulb. Various rooms wandered off in different
>> directions. All rooms were rough made and obviously meant for storage
>> and such. There were the rooms that were coal bins in the winter
>> (coal came in through the window.) There was the furnace room, eerily
>> lit by flickering flames only in winter, otherwise totally dark. It
>> was a very cold place because the outdoor access was cement stairs
>> covered by a drop down wooden lid. This kind of basement was very
>> common in older houses in the upper mid-west.
>> Janet US
>
> If my grandparents were still alive, I'd compliment
> them on their posh basement. Interior stairs,
> natural gas heat, and a small play room for me.
>
> This was the 1960s in the Detroit suburbs.
>
> Cindy Hamilton
>
Both of my grandparents houses (they lived next door to each other) in
Ohio had interior stairs. The houses were built around 1900. They did
have a coal room with exterior coal chutes but by the first time I
visited them they'd long since stopped using coal.

My paternal grandmother's house had (likely still has) laundry chutes.
There was a big basket hanging in the middle of the basement to catch
the clothes as they tumbled down the chute.

I'm told my maternal grandparents' house had laundry chutes at one time
but grandpa did some renovations and blocked them off.

Still, the basements were sort of finished and definitely heated, even
if they were heated less than the floors above.

Jill