It was common to drop the ceiling because the dead air space acted almost like insulation. In an old drafty house, that helped comfort and expense.

Yes it could be the old lead painted ceilings and the “drywall” could have asbestos in it.

You need to learn a lot more before you start poking holes in things. Knob an tune isn’t a joke to find.

Maybe I'm missing something, but to me, the area in your photos looks more like an attic than a dining room.

Whatever. One cheap way of patching damaged old-house plaster ceilings is to cover them with drywall. Old house lovers cringe when they see that done, with good reason. Usually the house deserves better. (I say "usually" because in houses old often means well built, but not always. I've run across a few old houses that were thoroughly undistinguished -- just old.)

Before you tear down that drywall, you may want to contact a professional plasterer (if you can find one locally) and pay him or her look at the situation, to get an idea of what you might be in for.

As for knob and tube wiring, don't automatically be afraid of it if you find it in a ceiling. If it's been properly maintained (no oversize light bulbs, not buried in insulation), it's often still reasonably safe for lighting circuits.

Still it's best to replace it when you can, certainly if you have the ceiling open for other reasons. That's in part because age and air pollution have not been kind to the rubber that insulates it.

Thanks for the reply. It kind of does look like an attic now that I look at the pictures, but really I just stuck my phone in the small hole to see what was going on up there; I wanted to assess the situation to see how to go forth.

I have asked someone around the area who has knowledge of the house in its previous state about it and they confirmed that they lowered all the ceilings in the downstairs. I suspect there might have been ceiling tiles before and someone later came along and sheet rocked it and just didn't want to be bothered to remove all the framing, but I can't be for sure.

We definitely will be contacting some professionals to take a look at it before we go any further. Thanks for your help!

Its also fairly common for old plaster ceilings to sag or become uneven, and if there is enough height they sometimes just screw another layer on top of them to pull it all into place. However, yours appears to have 2x4s, which is much more framing than I've ever seen. If they add wood, usually its just furring strips.

Bruce

Many older houses have dropped ceilings as yours, especially houses that were built in the 1900s you would find almost every kitchen with a dropped ceiling.

I think people did them to cover up cracked plaster, so instead of having all that mess that demo would make removing the plaster, they would do a drop ceiling.

Another reason IMO is to save on heating bills, some older homes had high ceilings and they would have a radiator here and there without any wall insulation, all the heat would go right up there, so they would lower the ceiling.