My grandparents' house (1930) had the slot for razor blades. I always wondered where they went.

My parents' home when I was in college (1963) had the whole-house intercom/radio with a speaker in each room. It also had the Bewitched stove. We removed it when we sold the house, and sold it on craigslist.

We had an intercom too, in one of our homes, then we moved and my dad created a DIY one so he could play music for us at night.

That house came with an in-ground trampoline. I remember being afraid of the pit underneath.

Not when a child but seen in a magazine as a child was a stove similar to aok's in that it had the double ovens. One with a rotisserie the bigger one plain. The cook top had burners set in a row three of one size and another smaller with a cutting board in front of the burners. The burners slide back under the ovens leaving the cutting board part as a work surface. When we purchased this house it came with that stove. One day I came home to find that it was gone. An out of town friend of my husband and he had removed it and taken it to a scrap yard. They were so happy to tell me that they watched it being crunched and I no longer had to worry about replacing one of the burners. I still become angry when I think about it especially since this area has a shop that redoes older stoves and my husband knew about it.

Maifleur03, not sure I’d still be married after that!

A butler's pantry. Have always put that at the top of my wish list. Very cool.

Annette it was very close.

Grilled cheese/waffle maker from the 50's, still use it and it's far better quality than today's versions.

Our house was built in 1962 by a fine craftsman who was a family friend. The floors in the kitchen and family room were linoleum, and curved a few inches up the wall into a cove that made it easy to clean. We had a "warming oven" to keep food at the right temperature. My dad had seen one at his friend's restaurant and thought it would come in handy at home. (It did.) We also had a special filtration system on the furnace that removed dust. The house literally never needed to be dusted.

From my parent's house, a laundry chute. From my grandparent's house, many of the old time appliances: a real ice box, wood stove, roller to squeeze water out of items washed in the brook before hanging them to dry. And the dishwasher, that was me :)

Before I was born my dad had an ice cream parlor for a while. I grew up with milkshakes made with the green cast iron Hamilton Beach maker from that shop and I still use it to this day. My grandparent's kitchen had a small gas stove but also a working wood stove. They also had a real cellar outside the kitchen door. Their house was an old farmhouse. It had a beautiful marble fireplace in the formal living room. When they sold it the family that bought was going to restore it. I guess they ran out of funds because the property ended up being razed and sold to developers. It's condos today. Makes me want to cry and I wish I could have salvaged so many things from that house from the doorknobs that used skeleton keys to that lovely mantel. Another thing I found odd and unusual was the stairway to the upstairs bedrooms had doors both at top and bottom of the staircase, and they locked.

Our stove had one removable (I think) burner that had what amounted to a slow cooker underneath the burner. There was a separate deep cook pot with a lid that could be inserted into the well where there was another burner that operated at a low temperature. My mother cooked several large meals in that thing, including chow mein, one of our family favorites. It took all day.

Nothing I can think of, but I miss my second German apartment back in the 80s. Rollatins on the windows and nice, wide, stone window ledges that I kept lots of plants on. Oh, and my shower with a seat. The bathroom also had a cool, extra deep bathtub with a back that was slightly sloped so you could sit back and soak after a long Volksmarch in the cold, muddy woods.

I have some of my mother's single use electrics from the 1960's that are wonderful. One is a metal container with a hinged canvas top used to keep bread/rolls warm. Another is a glass and silverplate coffee carafe that keeps coffee warm at the perfect temperature so that it never goes bitter.

A built in milk door for deliveries to the house. Also handy when you got locked out and the littlest kid could squeeze through.

Annette,when I remodeled my bathroom, we did find rusty old razor blades in the wall behind the medicine chest. What a disgusting idea!

Fun2B, I have my mom’s wicker basket with a fabric liner that is like an electric blanket, with a cord to plug in, to keep rolls warm.

My childhood home and my grandmother’s house had incinerators. We put paper products in, and the constant low flame incinerated it gently and polluted the atmosphere. Sorry.

My townhouse had a little door on the inside and outside, for the milk. By the time I bought it, the inside door had been painted shut. The outside door to the milk box was handy for keeping my trowel and watering can.

Mail slots. A hole in your wall with a little door inside and out for the mail.

Sunken garbage cans! With a step-on pedal to open the lid!

Annette, I’d forgotten about the pedal to open the freezer door! Brilliant, isn’t it?

We had one refrigerator with shelves that swiveled out from one side, and were also easily adjustable. That was a great refrigerator.

We had intercoms, but by the time you got up to go push the button to reply, it was easier to yell down the stairs lol. In our current house, we can see that there was an intercom system, it it was removed and the holes not-very-seamlessly patched.

We had this cool appliance. It was like a waffle or quesadilla maker, but with four sections. You made a sandwich, put it in the appliance, close it, and it made four little ravioli or quesadilla like things. Mom made them for my brother’s space birthday party (it was the early 1960s), and called them Flying Saucers. So that’s what we always called them. Boy, those were so good. Ham and cheese, hot dog slice and cheese, peanut butter, ooh, yum.

The farmhouse I grew up in originated as a stage coach stop. It still had the opening in a wall that had the square slots for mail and the drawer beneath that that opened both ways so that mail, stamps, change, whatever could be passed back and forth from the customer to the proprietor, who was probably also a banker of sorts. When my Dad remodeled the bathroom, in the 1950s if I remember right, he made an opening in the wall to install a medicine cabinet, and found newspapers dated in the 1800s. I'm thinking the 1820s, but I could be wrong about that.

I also remember my Mom cooking on a wood burning stove, and water for doing dishes, laundry and baths also had to be heated on that stove.

Rusty

My parents1958 house had a laundry chute from 2nd floor to basement. It also had a cedar closet for out-of-season clothes and Moms fur stoles. Mail box was also a chute into the front hall. Next door neighbors had the sunken garbage cans. There were sprinkler heads sunk into the lawn of our house for watering.

My sons new-for-him 1940 house has a mail chute and also a chute for milk delivery. The landing of the 2nd floor staircase has a built in bookcase. The walkway from sidewalk to front door is paved with slate instead of concrete.

My 1973 house has a pocket wood door to conserve space to half bath. Above a bank of drawers in the kitchen is a slide out cutting board. I use it about once a decade because it's inconvenient & I don't think it's sanitary. The linnen closet inside the main bathroom has a wall mount phone.

It also had the Bewitched stove. We removed it when we sold the house, and sold it on craigslist.

My childhood home had that stove too.

My parents bought their house in 62 as well. It was a typical California ranch with no bells or whistles. However, my dad was a Navy man and he decorated the house as if it was a ship using real ship stuff he got from the Navy ship yard. My sisters and I slept in Navy bunks, the ships wheel was over the fire place (of course). He made our mail box which was a miniature life boat that hung from pullies. The lifesaver on the front post had our name on it. and was centered between two brass running lights. The topper was the 200lb anchor he put on the front lawn with a light bouy he welded together using a beer keg for the bottom. There was ship rope that lined the edge of the yard and he was working on a 30 foot mast when he passed.. He was really creative and had a lot of fun with it.

Growing up our 1949 Maytag stove had push buttons to operate the burners. It was still going strong when we sold my mother's house in 2000 and we left it in the house.

Maytag wringer washing machine.

It wasn't a 'cool' thing, it was a 'warm' thing. It was the 40 inch square iron grate register in the living room floor. It was directly above the coal furnace that was in the basement. At least four kids could stand on it at a time to get warm enough to go back outside to sled ride a little longer on cold winter nights. It was a place to stand and let the warm, sometimes hot air blow up your skirt and warm your butt, or lay your mittens to dry. The dog would lay on it and sleep sometimes even whining a little when he got too warm, but he wouldn't move. It was the only heat source for the whole house, and heated the whole 3 story house well.

I've seen or heard of many of cool (and warm!) things mentioned, except the floor pedal for refrigerators - that is awesome! My childhood homes were dull and boring. My current home, built in 1940, has two features not yet mentioned: mud-scrappers embedded in the cement near the side door and at the base of the steps leading into the back yard. I imagine the man of the house needing to scrape the garden soil off his boots before coming inside. The other feature is: the side door steps are hinged, so each kid had a place to store their shoes and little toys (in the long 'box' under the tread of each step).

We had a mangle (terrible name, huh?). Also, my mother worked from home using a comptometer.

In 3rd grade, we had a house with flagstone flooring.....with horse hoove prints in the flagstone. During parties the previous owners had brought their horses into the house and the steel horse shoes had made imprints in the flooring. They filled in the prints with cement.....making them more prominent. As a kid I thought THIS was very COOL! As an adult.....nooooooooooooooooo.....would NOT want this in my house. But ....MAN! I loved it as a kid. ♥

Socks, my mother used a mangler, too, for the sheets(before permanent press), tablecloths, and napkins. Is still in their house! Hasn't been used in 40 years at least, I wonder if it still works? Can I sell it or just let the scrap metal guy have it?

Nickel, I remember those embedded boot scrapers. And my friend's house which was older than ours had a couple of steps that were hinged like that, too. I thought it was so cool.

Our cooktop had pushbuttons. I think one of the early French Chef episodes had such a cooktop.

My grandmother's house has a servant call system. You know how in Downton Abbey there's a system to ring a bell in the servant's kitchen? Grandmother had buttons in every room to sound a buzzer a light a number on a panel in the kitchen. She ended up never having a live in housekeeper, but we kids drove her crazy by pressing buttons all over the house.

I remember one of the houses had a built in ironing board in a cabinet in the kitchen. I always thought that was a great idea. But who irons anymore, I haven't in years.

@calflowerluver, I have a built-in ironing board and I think it is the most useless thing ever as you only have access to one end of the board. I don't mind ironing and iron my shirts and sheets, but I have a regular ironing board that I set up in the kitchen.

We had a pinball machine in the basement. It was old enough that it originally cost a nickle to play. I've looked up information about it and it was manufactured in 1948, only the second year that pinball machines existed.

One day my father announced that he sold it, and he used the money to buy a really fancy, top-end, programmable calculator, that today is probably worthless. "But look" he said, "You can play games on this too. It has a lunar lander game"

My grandfather built the house (where I grew up) in 1932, and I think he had help from my great-grandfather, but I do not know who designed it, or how they came up with the plan for it. The bathroom was in the center of the house with no outside windows, and so there was instead a window between the bathroom and the middle bedroom. This room also had a door to the outside with a large porch and doors to the other two bedrooms, plus a door to the closet. There was a light switch in that closet that would turn the overhead light on and off - not sure why.

Lars, my friend growing up had a house with a long porch off the bedrooms. I think it would have been a sleeping porch, which would have been essential in Texas in the ‘30s! My mom moved to Chicago in the ‘40s as a young woman, and during heat waves people would go sleep on their fire escapes or on the beach.

caflowerlover, my brother moved into a vintage building, and there is the remains of a built-in ironing board in the kitchen. The board is long gone, but he fitted the shallow cabinet with shelves and it is just right for spice jars.

The 1914 farmhouse that we lived in from 1958-1967 had something like the Downton Abbey ringers in the kitchen, but they no longer worked. It had both back and front stairs. It also had a cedar room (yes, an entire small room!) with closets and built in drawers, and a window lined but unheated "sun room" over the attached carport (cold in winter - we used it to store baskets of apples - and very hot in summer!) One closet in the upstairs hall had multiple shallow drawers that I think must have been for maps or blueprints. The basement had multiple rooms with a coal chute (which my parents used for kindling wood for the fireplaces) and even the large, multi space garage down by the barn had a basement! There were still hand operated water pumps in two spots down close to the barn, also.

This house had been part of a very large and prosperous farm, but by the time we lived there, nearly all of the acreage had been sold off (still had the large barn, a small orchard and one fallow field where we had our garden) - houses built in the immediately surrounding area and some other fields were still farmed but by other owners. All developed now.

Nearly forgot the insulated boxes that everyone had outside their back door for the milk delivery. Everyone had some form of clothesline, also.

We have a clothesline in our basement, so did my grandparents. Sometimes I hang blue jeans or other heavy clothes on it to dry out a bit before finishing them in the dryer. It saves a good amount of dryer time, which saves a fair amount of electricity.

I have had a clothesline in every house since I was married. Mother had a circular one but mine is the "old fashioned " kind that I use every week year-round except when it's raining.

My grandmothers apartment had a button over her kitchen sink that we pressed to warm the water to wash dishes. And we had a 2nd floor apartment with a pulley clothesline running from back porch to a telephone pole across the yard.

Cement double laundry tub in the basement.

Did anyone mention trash compactors?

Kathyg, when we remodeled our lower-level laundry room in our last house, I wanted to take out the cement double laundry tub. Our regular handy guy wouldn’t do it! He said I’d hate him for it. Well, I thought I knew what I wanted and found someone else who would take it out, set the washing machine to drain to a pipe instead of the sink, and put in a base cabinet with storage and a single laundry sink. While I loved the new setup, including upper cabinets, the first guy was right. I really missed the cement double sink. Our new house has two laundry tubs, one in the laundry and one in the basement, but boy, I sure do miss the cement double sinks. My grandmother had a set, too. They are the BEST, so USEFUL. So UGLY. But workhorses.

We had an intercom and a laundry chute, too, and a huge laundry tub. The lowest level had heated floors which was lovely. Also, a screened in porch that ran the full length of the house before that one-it looked out to the woods and we watched pheasants, groundhogs, and rabbits at the bottom of the hill. The night sky was filled with lighnng bugs.

My mother's kitchen range was wood burning on one side.The other side had gas burners heated by propane.

We had a Frigidaire 4 burner fold down electric stovetop my mom loved it.

My grandparents home has an upper kitchen cabinet with a screened hole cut through to the outside wall for keeping things cool. It’s still there (family member owns the house now).

I always loved our Dutch door.

I just remembered our toaster. It was those flip kind where you opened the side doors, turn the bread and close the door again.

Oh yes! And the fat cloth cord on those appliances.

A laundry chute and a built into the wall telephone shelf, with a shelf underneath for the fat phone book. We loved to play hide and seek and go down the laundry chute to the basement. Now that would be considered too dangerous. All us cousins had houses with laundry chutes, our aunt with no kids would never let us go down hers. We couldn't understand why........

Ladypat, my grandmother's little bungalow had a telephone niche too - I had forgotten!

Has anyone mentioned push button light switches? the 1914 house had those, too.

Our natural gas air conditioner had a water cooling tower that had a comforting ”rain” sound when it ran.

Phone niche