There is no stall around the toilets. There sometimes aren't even walls nearby. These are functional toilets, that people might pee upon. I cannot fathom using such a toilet. I have enough trouble in my own cozy apartment, let alone in the middle of a room where, at any time, Corey or an intruder could burst down the steps with some laundry and interrupt a BM. Who would ever use such a toilet?
When I first saw it, I sucked in my breath and held my hand to my mouth and grabbed Corey's arm. "Look!" I pointed, as if there were some roadkill in the basement.
Not in a bathroom, but in the middle of the basementBoth he and the realtor looked at me like I was the crazy person.
"That's just the Pittsburgh Potty," they told me, as if this were totally normal. When did Corey get all in with the lingo? And why the heck did the city invent such a thing? Corey told me some story about mill workers and dirt, but I don't see how you are any cleaner after pooping downstairs. I think it's madness. Trailer park habits disguised by cement walls and dryer sheets.
9 comments:
At least it has nice butterflies on the lid. Once you have children and no privcy that Pittsburg potty will look pretty good.
ahhh, the Pittsburgh toilet. so classy, I know.
I've used them before. there's nothing weirder! except, maybe, the toilets in jail. but they at least have a little half-wall for privacy...
How exciting to know that even convicts read your blog!
yes. The Pittsburgh Toilet. My grandfather's house had one. My great-grandmother's row house had one. It was common during turn of the century home construction to build a number of homes in a block at one time. As this was before the advent of the porta-john, the crews would install a toilet on the main sewage line of one of the houses to be the go-to point for them all. When they were done, they simply left it as it was as a "gift" to the new homeowner. "Look. A free toilet. Who wouldn't want that?"
Okay, seriously. I thought everyone did this. I would need both hands and feet to count the number of relatives that have such toilets. And that does not even include houses of friends.
i'm totally with katy on this one - who's ever heard of a toilet sitting open in the middle of your basement? how strange.
i have an idea who could use it tho - a pet! you could get a cat and train it to use that toilet instead of a litter box. or a dog even. they wouldn't mind the no walls, and all you'd have to do was flush once or twice a day!
if you are extra-lucky, you also have a showerhead next to the toilet.
the previous owners of our house built a wall around our showerhead and toilet, but they never finished whatever they were up to down there, so it's not really functional. it's on the list of "home improvement projects for 2008". (2007 has "brick repointing, removal of carpet, painting, new fence".)
Grew up in the South Side slopes my parents house had the Pittsburgh toilet under the basement steps. In the other basement room was the shower head next to the washer. Both my parents house and the one I live in now has the toilet, shower head and the external enterance to the basement. The original builders & owners of these homes were steel mill workers and would enter via the basement shower then use the toilet before entering the rest of the house after work.
Der Geis has the only sensible explanation. Obviously, if the objective were to clean-up, a toilet wouldn't be the main piece of basement plumbing. I never saw a bmt toilet exposed -and I've lived here 50 yrs, including in the Homestead area. Most people have long since enclosed them, just as they've transformed coal furnaces and coal cellars. Nor is that toilet to be sneered at: I visit overpriced NY houses now subdivided and wd be grateful for a toilet in the bmts now converted to guest rooms. It's difficult and expensive to install bmt toilets now, so the urge to urinate has to be suppressed til one flees upstairs. The real Pgh trait is to take for granted or denigrate its special qualities and features. Try a little pride instead
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