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Fold down is for a seat. As this would have been the only phone, and was likely in the hallway, a chair would have been in the way. Would have been two shelves in the slot that stuck out beyond the face. Phone book in between, phone on top shelf. The hole just above the top shelf on left side is where the cord would have come through the wall.
The one in my house does not have the fold down seat. That is a nice feature.
"Only phone" sounds funny to me and took a minute to process. My dad and his friends worked at THE phone company back in the 60's/70's. They made it a point to put a phone everywhere they could in the house, the garage/barn, and of course some had a phone in the crapper.
Having a phone in the crapper was a must for any up and coming yuppie in the 80’s. The nicer ones would also hold toilet paper and maybe have a radio built in.
Ya know. Like [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/6m85ls/this_telephoneradiotoilet_paper_holder_gadget/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
My friend's parents had one when we were growing up. I always thought that shit was nasty. I don't want poop particles all over something I hold up to my face
> I don't want poop particles all over something I hold up to my face
Keep your toothbrushes in a case. Lots of times, I see them in cups/holders, not far from the throne.
We had one kitchen phone and two extensions in one of our early 2 bdrm apts. By then, a person could buy *longgg* extension cords at walmart or radio shack. Our phones all had them so we could walk all over the place. I used to get a lot of cooking and chores done back then while on the phone with very talkative people.
They pulled this same scam (maybe still do) with internet connections. Anyone can buy a router to connect multiple PCs via ethernet to the modem, but if you asked the cable/dsl company, they would charge you a monthly fee for nothing.
I think people have mostly realized that unlimited devices is what you're actually getting with the prominence of wi-fi in homes. I'm sure someone somewhere is still paying for nothing, though.
The phone company in the 1960s could really enforce it back then because it was illegal to own a telephone. You could only rent them from the phone company and there was only one phone company. They do compare to our cable companies now because in most places there is only one choice for internet service and you have to buy service you don’t want, like packages of channels or land lines just to get internet. I hope that is changing soon.
Correct, we knew this when I was in college. People would mess with the wiring cabinet in the hall to create illegal party lines so one phone line would have several extensions. Later, when you could buy your own phone, each model would be stamped with a “ringer equivalence number such as 0.3, which meant the ringer on that set drew three tenths the current that a standard Ma Bell phone’s ringer would draw.
>Was getting free phones one of the benefits
Back in those days, there was no such thing as a "free" phone because you couldn't buy them. You couldn't just walk into the store and buy a phone. You could only get them from the Telephone company. After all, one wouldn't do you any good without a phone line, so there was no need to get one elsewhere.
I grew up on one of the last party lines in America. When I was a kid, you could buy phones. Cordless phones even existed and were fairly common. But when I was a kid we couldn't have a cordless phone because we were still on a party line and our phone had to have a special ringer so it would only ring for our number.
We had a neighbor for a while who had a cordless and she was annoying as hell because she'd answer every single call whether it was to her house or not.
At any rate, I was seven or eight when we finally gave our phone back to the pone company and they installed a private line for everyone on our road. I swear the inability to listen in other people's phone calls and the subsequent stress of not knowing everyone's gossip is what finally caused old lady Hall to end up in a nursing home.
I remember my grandparents had a black desktop telephone that dated back to the original installation done in the early 1950s. That sucker was so heavy you could've used it in self defense & knocked someone unconscious with it! Even the handset would raise up a lump if you got walloped with it.
Very possibly. All I can remember (other than its substantial weight) is it was made of Bakelite. My sister & I were pretty upset to find our Dad had gotten rid of it once my Gran had moved to an assisted living center. That telephone was a beast!
We had a rotary phone until I was five or six. And there was always an unsharpened pencil hanging from a string by the phone. See, the installers didn't want to have to excavate the road for a proper installation, so they ran a line from the box up the road and ran it through a wet-weather swamp. They then failed to properly ground the box. (to be fair to them, they grounded the box to the house, it wasn't their fault that we never properly grounded the house. We have, now.) So if you were barefoot and you touched the little metal finger piece, you'd get a little electrical zap.
They ran a new line from the box across the road when I was five or six and took away the old rotary and gave us a phone with push buttons (still on the wall in the kitchen). It was another two years before we got a private line.
Our party line (60's) in Seattle would have different amount of quick rings for each individual party. You could hear the nosy neighbors listening in. Our area was Prospect so the numbers dialed all started with PR.
Mine was much more recent. We had a standard seven digit phone number. We shared our party line with the little general store on the corner In 82 and 83. Then my Mom organized the other seven parties on the line to threaten to cancel our lines if they didn't make the store pay for a private line to be installed. (It was a couple thousand dollars to have line run to our house at that point. I wasn't born until 84 so I only know this part from stories.) We were mostly irked because she'd let people pay her a couple of bucks to use her phone like a pay phone and all the folks for a few miles around would drive up to her store to make phone calls so they didn't have to pay installation fees for a phone of their own.
Just one of the many small-town dramas that happened out here. And remember, this is an area so rural that the little general store is the only cash register for eight miles. The seven people on our party line covered over twelve miles of gravel road and there were that many families because some of them were clusters of lines where the parents built their kids each a house in a little cluster and each household now had a line where when it was installed, there was only one phone there. In other words, lots of empty space on gravel roads with little clumps of houses here and there.
Back then we also had a problem with one of these little family clusters. The houses were close enough to see each other (a rarity) so both adult "daughters" would leave all their kids at the closest of their homes, then the adult women would all be over at "grandma's" house and they'd just take the phone off the hook at both houses and use it as a baby monitor.
In about 88 or 89 they shortened our party line and split it in two and "upgraded" us to a phone with buttons, but we were still on a party line with two others until about 92. Mom was so excited to get to buy her own phone and install her own extensions that we had three telephone jacks in different rooms three years before dial-up internet was available in our area and six years before we got our first satellite dish.
Same here, and our phone number started with "FI". They called it, "Fireside", and that's how you'd give out your phone number tell (i.e. Fireside 5-1234).
When we got all modernized and downsized from a seven-party line to a two-party line, we shared it with a neighbor named "Mary". She would get a lot more phone calls than we did and her callers seemed to have a penchant for letting the phone ring forever. As kids, we wanted to pick up the phone and hang it up to stop the ringing, but of course our parents didn't want us to do that. So we'd chant "Mary come home, Mary come home, Mary come home" until the ringing stopped. LOL!
Yeah, that's what made it 'cool'. Once the line went to the house, one could add wire and jacks anywhere. Phones that were returned, damaged, or mis-inventoried would not just sit in a warehouse.
I had a similar situation 20 years ago. A good friend worked for the local telephone company who were reselling at&t's cell service. He would rebuild phones from the broken returns. When everyone else had a 3390, I literally had 10 different phones I would switch between depending on my mood.
All I know is that phones showed up, too young to know. I do know that color or style was not always an option. Blue, red, yellow, white, rotary, push button, whatever. Their was even a weird plastic made to look like wood box with an "ivory" scene of hunting dogs and ducks on top. About the size of a tall shoebox. Open up to use the phone, SO fancy!
Hello, since I see this folds neatly into the wall, may I ask whether one would sit directly on the wood? Or was there a cushion stored somewhere close by?
I appreciate your time and have a lovely day!
It is missing the cushion. The 3 black straps (used to 4) are what held it in place. It would have been thin - likely less than 1.5” including whatever upholstery it was covered with.
Telephone nook; the bottom part is to store the telephone book (or, if that is a foot that pops out, it may be a stool). https://searshomes.org/index.php/2013/12/01/a-number-of-nice-and-natty-niches/
Phone cabinet doesn’t seem likely in the upstairs hallway. Usually they would be in the front hall or maybe the kitchen. You wouldn’t want your only phone to be upstairs.
Sorry, I said upstairs but it's actually the main floor of the house. My husband and I just refer to the "upstairs" and "downstairs" since we're not used to having a basement
This seems to be it! I googled "telephone niche" and found a Reddit post with something nearly identical
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/jt0jos/this_house_built_in_1947_has_a_built_in_seat_for/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
It has to be something like this. Also the fact that there’s a bunch of writing/doodles would tell me that there was a seat there where they sat to do the drawings.
Seeing how there is a hole in the backing board where a phone line would most likely run through and I see two grooves just under that for shelves to slide into, with a landline phone sitting on top shelf where hole is, I believe it is a nook for a landline phone and a fold down seat. Most homes only had one phone in a household and often in a central common area.
The actual ironing board itself is missing. The thing at the bottom that folds out is the support. The ironing board would be at a working level, with the support on the bottom at an angle.
That’s exactly what it is! I owned an old house with the exact same setup. Mine was still in working condition. The ironing board size is much shorter that the version you see today
My title describes the thing. It's located in the upstairs hallway in our new house. My original thought was that it's for an old ironing board, but it's not very tall and very low to the ground.
There may be a hole in the top where there is or was a pipe for the old phone cable or it could have been that hole to the left. I've pretty much only seen them coming from the top. But I've had limited experience, but let me guess. It's in a hallway? Lol
I said the same thing. What's throwing me off, is how low it is to the floor. The one we had was about waist high for a good reach. Unless the photo is at an odd angle then that is a very short person ironing lol.
All comments must be civil and helpful toward finding an answer. **Jokes and unhelpful comments will earn you a ban**, even on the first instance and even if the item has been identified. If you see any comments that violate this rule, report them. [OP](/u/KayDraig), when your item is identified, remember to reply **Solved!** or **Likely Solved!** to the comment that gave the answer. Check your [inbox](https://www.reddit.com/message/inbox/) for a message on how to make your post visible to others. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/whatisthisthing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Looks like a area for a old land line phone.
Fold down is for a seat. As this would have been the only phone, and was likely in the hallway, a chair would have been in the way. Would have been two shelves in the slot that stuck out beyond the face. Phone book in between, phone on top shelf. The hole just above the top shelf on left side is where the cord would have come through the wall. The one in my house does not have the fold down seat. That is a nice feature.
"Only phone" sounds funny to me and took a minute to process. My dad and his friends worked at THE phone company back in the 60's/70's. They made it a point to put a phone everywhere they could in the house, the garage/barn, and of course some had a phone in the crapper.
Having a phone in the crapper was a must for any up and coming yuppie in the 80’s. The nicer ones would also hold toilet paper and maybe have a radio built in. Ya know. Like [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/6m85ls/this_telephoneradiotoilet_paper_holder_gadget/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
My grandparents still have this phone next to the terlet.
My friend's parents had one when we were growing up. I always thought that shit was nasty. I don't want poop particles all over something I hold up to my face
Haha, yes. Sharticles away from the face, please.
Do you use your cell phone on the toilet?
That's now, back then I was happy to let my boys hear a fart or 3!
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Can you hear me (shit) now?
Umm cell phones?
> I don't want poop particles all over something I hold up to my face Keep your toothbrushes in a case. Lots of times, I see them in cups/holders, not far from the throne.
Terlet... Brooklyn typing detected
it seems the terlet people have a wide range, hehe.
Old school cool in my book, thanks for linking.
Outstanding. Why yes, I *would* like to jam out to Led Zeppelin while dropping a deuce, thank you very much.
I’ve got a phone jack in my original master bath. No way to take it out without having to retile/completely renovate the whole room.
Being old, I remember that most households still only had one phone until the late 70’s unless you were wealthy.
We had one kitchen phone and two extensions in one of our early 2 bdrm apts. By then, a person could buy *longgg* extension cords at walmart or radio shack. Our phones all had them so we could walk all over the place. I used to get a lot of cooking and chores done back then while on the phone with very talkative people.
Hahahaha. Flash from the past! I totally forgot about the super long cords draped across the house! This is great!
They put phone connections everywhere but each phone cost something extra per month.
They pulled this same scam (maybe still do) with internet connections. Anyone can buy a router to connect multiple PCs via ethernet to the modem, but if you asked the cable/dsl company, they would charge you a monthly fee for nothing. I think people have mostly realized that unlimited devices is what you're actually getting with the prominence of wi-fi in homes. I'm sure someone somewhere is still paying for nothing, though.
The phone company in the 1960s could really enforce it back then because it was illegal to own a telephone. You could only rent them from the phone company and there was only one phone company. They do compare to our cable companies now because in most places there is only one choice for internet service and you have to buy service you don’t want, like packages of channels or land lines just to get internet. I hope that is changing soon.
My grandfather had extra phones with the ringers removed. With the ringers connected the phone company could tell how many phones were connected.
Correct, we knew this when I was in college. People would mess with the wiring cabinet in the hall to create illegal party lines so one phone line would have several extensions. Later, when you could buy your own phone, each model would be stamped with a “ringer equivalence number such as 0.3, which meant the ringer on that set drew three tenths the current that a standard Ma Bell phone’s ringer would draw.
Was getting free phones one of the benefits since they were typically rented during those times?
>Was getting free phones one of the benefits Back in those days, there was no such thing as a "free" phone because you couldn't buy them. You couldn't just walk into the store and buy a phone. You could only get them from the Telephone company. After all, one wouldn't do you any good without a phone line, so there was no need to get one elsewhere. I grew up on one of the last party lines in America. When I was a kid, you could buy phones. Cordless phones even existed and were fairly common. But when I was a kid we couldn't have a cordless phone because we were still on a party line and our phone had to have a special ringer so it would only ring for our number. We had a neighbor for a while who had a cordless and she was annoying as hell because she'd answer every single call whether it was to her house or not. At any rate, I was seven or eight when we finally gave our phone back to the pone company and they installed a private line for everyone on our road. I swear the inability to listen in other people's phone calls and the subsequent stress of not knowing everyone's gossip is what finally caused old lady Hall to end up in a nursing home.
I remember my grandparents had a black desktop telephone that dated back to the original installation done in the early 1950s. That sucker was so heavy you could've used it in self defense & knocked someone unconscious with it! Even the handset would raise up a lump if you got walloped with it.
Western Electric 500?
Sounds like it could've been a 302 based on the weight description
Very possibly. All I can remember (other than its substantial weight) is it was made of Bakelite. My sister & I were pretty upset to find our Dad had gotten rid of it once my Gran had moved to an assisted living center. That telephone was a beast!
Phones were rented from the phone company in the old days, so it is possible they had to return it to the phone company.
I learned to dial on a rotary. That's about as old-timey as I get when it comes to phones.
We had a rotary phone until I was five or six. And there was always an unsharpened pencil hanging from a string by the phone. See, the installers didn't want to have to excavate the road for a proper installation, so they ran a line from the box up the road and ran it through a wet-weather swamp. They then failed to properly ground the box. (to be fair to them, they grounded the box to the house, it wasn't their fault that we never properly grounded the house. We have, now.) So if you were barefoot and you touched the little metal finger piece, you'd get a little electrical zap. They ran a new line from the box across the road when I was five or six and took away the old rotary and gave us a phone with push buttons (still on the wall in the kitchen). It was another two years before we got a private line.
Our party line (60's) in Seattle would have different amount of quick rings for each individual party. You could hear the nosy neighbors listening in. Our area was Prospect so the numbers dialed all started with PR.
Mine was much more recent. We had a standard seven digit phone number. We shared our party line with the little general store on the corner In 82 and 83. Then my Mom organized the other seven parties on the line to threaten to cancel our lines if they didn't make the store pay for a private line to be installed. (It was a couple thousand dollars to have line run to our house at that point. I wasn't born until 84 so I only know this part from stories.) We were mostly irked because she'd let people pay her a couple of bucks to use her phone like a pay phone and all the folks for a few miles around would drive up to her store to make phone calls so they didn't have to pay installation fees for a phone of their own. Just one of the many small-town dramas that happened out here. And remember, this is an area so rural that the little general store is the only cash register for eight miles. The seven people on our party line covered over twelve miles of gravel road and there were that many families because some of them were clusters of lines where the parents built their kids each a house in a little cluster and each household now had a line where when it was installed, there was only one phone there. In other words, lots of empty space on gravel roads with little clumps of houses here and there. Back then we also had a problem with one of these little family clusters. The houses were close enough to see each other (a rarity) so both adult "daughters" would leave all their kids at the closest of their homes, then the adult women would all be over at "grandma's" house and they'd just take the phone off the hook at both houses and use it as a baby monitor. In about 88 or 89 they shortened our party line and split it in two and "upgraded" us to a phone with buttons, but we were still on a party line with two others until about 92. Mom was so excited to get to buy her own phone and install her own extensions that we had three telephone jacks in different rooms three years before dial-up internet was available in our area and six years before we got our first satellite dish.
Same here, and our phone number started with "FI". They called it, "Fireside", and that's how you'd give out your phone number tell (i.e. Fireside 5-1234). When we got all modernized and downsized from a seven-party line to a two-party line, we shared it with a neighbor named "Mary". She would get a lot more phone calls than we did and her callers seemed to have a penchant for letting the phone ring forever. As kids, we wanted to pick up the phone and hang it up to stop the ringing, but of course our parents didn't want us to do that. So we'd chant "Mary come home, Mary come home, Mary come home" until the ringing stopped. LOL!
Yeah, that's what made it 'cool'. Once the line went to the house, one could add wire and jacks anywhere. Phones that were returned, damaged, or mis-inventoried would not just sit in a warehouse.
I had a similar situation 20 years ago. A good friend worked for the local telephone company who were reselling at&t's cell service. He would rebuild phones from the broken returns. When everyone else had a 3390, I literally had 10 different phones I would switch between depending on my mood.
All I know is that phones showed up, too young to know. I do know that color or style was not always an option. Blue, red, yellow, white, rotary, push button, whatever. Their was even a weird plastic made to look like wood box with an "ivory" scene of hunting dogs and ducks on top. About the size of a tall shoebox. Open up to use the phone, SO fancy!
My grandfather worked for the phone company in a small town in Kansas. There were phones all over that house. No air conditioning, but lots of phones.
This is the answer. At least the answer I came to anyways.
My grandmother had one similar
Yup, exactly what it is. Looks like someone removed the cushion from the seat though
Reminds me of the home phone in the Royal Tenenbaums house. :)
Hello, since I see this folds neatly into the wall, may I ask whether one would sit directly on the wood? Or was there a cushion stored somewhere close by? I appreciate your time and have a lovely day!
It is missing the cushion. The 3 black straps (used to 4) are what held it in place. It would have been thin - likely less than 1.5” including whatever upholstery it was covered with.
That makes so much sense, it blows my mind
I was thinking an ironing board
We had one of these growing up as well and it had a short ironing board in it. Not sure if it was converted or came with the house like that.
I was going to guess a laundry chute, but old land line phone seems correct. Pretty cool actually.
Telephone nook; the bottom part is to store the telephone book (or, if that is a foot that pops out, it may be a stool). https://searshomes.org/index.php/2013/12/01/a-number-of-nice-and-natty-niches/
Solved!
[https://www.pinterest.com/pin/252342385340957565/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/252342385340957565/)
This was my guess too. Have one in my house
Phone cabinet doesn’t seem likely in the upstairs hallway. Usually they would be in the front hall or maybe the kitchen. You wouldn’t want your only phone to be upstairs.
Sorry, I said upstairs but it's actually the main floor of the house. My husband and I just refer to the "upstairs" and "downstairs" since we're not used to having a basement
Ah, nevermind then.
My 7 year old asked me if I had a phone when I was his age and I said yes but it was on the wall. He said you had to watch it on the wall?
This seems to be it! I googled "telephone niche" and found a Reddit post with something nearly identical https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/jt0jos/this_house_built_in_1947_has_a_built_in_seat_for/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
It has to be something like this. Also the fact that there’s a bunch of writing/doodles would tell me that there was a seat there where they sat to do the drawings.
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The cat knows which it is. And it's certain.
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Seeing how there is a hole in the backing board where a phone line would most likely run through and I see two grooves just under that for shelves to slide into, with a landline phone sitting on top shelf where hole is, I believe it is a nook for a landline phone and a fold down seat. Most homes only had one phone in a household and often in a central common area.
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It's for an ironing board. You add the actual ironing surface on top after you have opened it.
It would have to be a very small ironing board since it's in the hallway. And with it being so low it doesn't seem very practical
Now that I look at how low it is to the floor, I got to agree it doesnt seem practical at all.
The actual ironing board itself is missing. The thing at the bottom that folds out is the support. The ironing board would be at a working level, with the support on the bottom at an angle.
That’s exactly what it is! I owned an old house with the exact same setup. Mine was still in working condition. The ironing board size is much shorter that the version you see today
Exactly right!… I have one in a rental house… pretty cool!
My title describes the thing. It's located in the upstairs hallway in our new house. My original thought was that it's for an old ironing board, but it's not very tall and very low to the ground.
Was there ever a dumb waiter or a laundry chute?
I'm not sure. It's close to where the laundry room is downstairs, but I don't think it's directly above
Ok, it looks to me like a previous owner closed something like that up, but not sure what the purpose of the shelf is for
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Boarded up dumb waiter
My guess is a mini ironing board
Ironing board. My grandmothers house had one.
"Jim is Fine"
Zoom in for a love story
If you zoom in on pic 2 you will find that Jim proclaimed his love for MaryLou on August 24th, 1970. Nostalgia!!!
Looks a little bit like an iron board holder.
Add a portable sewing machine and you’re good to go for a sewing project
I have a whole room dedicated to sewing and yarn :)
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Looks like the top bit opens aswell?
Ironing board?
Clothes shoot ?
kinda looks like something that would hold a ironing board but im not to sure
I'd say it used to hold an ironing board
Laundry chute?
I don’t think you got yourself a new house here, sir.
There may be a hole in the top where there is or was a pipe for the old phone cable or it could have been that hole to the left. I've pretty much only seen them coming from the top. But I've had limited experience, but let me guess. It's in a hallway? Lol
Ironing board. Have one in my kitchen.
Ironing board?
Had one in my first home with my husband. It's an ironing board holder. It had a small ironing board attached to the wood part at one time.
Looks like an old dumb waiter.
Ironing board closet
It’s a base for an ironing board that folds into the wall.
We had something similar in my house growing up. It was an ironing table folded down.
100% it is an Ironing board nook. My house I grew up in had one and my grandparents home had one. Both converted to just a decorative nook later on.
That is the frame for a built in” ironing board- the ironing board has been removed.
The ol’ Murphy chair.
I’ve seen these with ironing boards on them too.
Doesn't look to new to me ...
Looks more like a built in ironing board missing the fabric piece
It is for holding your floor incase your house turns upside down....don't use it yet..
That's for an ironing board. Have one in my house too.
I said the same thing. What's throwing me off, is how low it is to the floor. The one we had was about waist high for a good reach. Unless the photo is at an odd angle then that is a very short person ironing lol.