{"id":1741,"date":"2014-05-13T00:50:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T00:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/?p=1741"},"modified":"2017-09-02T01:34:20","modified_gmt":"2017-09-02T01:34:20","slug":"telephone-niche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/telephone-niche\/","title":{"rendered":"Telephone Niche"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As an architect who enjoys working with older and historic structures,\u00a0 I sometimes\u00a0 come across unique and interesting construction features or details that I would like to share with people, and hopefully, heighten someone&#8217;s awareness of and appreciation for the amazing diversity of our built environment.<\/p>\n<p>One suc<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1748 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/DSC_0432.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0432\" width=\"148\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/DSC_0432.jpg 678w, https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/DSC_0432-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 148px) 100vw, 148px\" \/>h detail I encountered in a brick bungalow built in 1932 that I am currently working on in the Stoneleigh section of Baltimore County, is this built-in telephone niche recessed into a first floor hall partition behind the Dining Room and opposite the stairs (right).<\/p>\n<p>Instead of placing statuary in the niche (as the ancient Romans had done in the Pantheon in Rome), apparently these stock units were available in the 1920&#8217;s and 30&#8217;s by mail order from companies that sold millwork, such as Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, or builders catalogues, as a home for that modern wonder, the telephone, to keep the clutter from wires out of sight. Usually, they were centrally located in the house on a wall near or beneath a stairs. In this case, the phone sat\/stood\u00a0 on the wood shelf, and partly recessed back into the niche.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/telephone-niche\/dsc_0431\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1747\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1747 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/DSC_0431.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0431\" width=\"135\" height=\"205\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/DSC_0431.jpg 678w, https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/DSC_0431-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 135px) 100vw, 135px\" \/><\/a>A hinged cabinet below the shelf\u00a0 (left) provided storage for telephone books, and concealed a wall plug,\u00a0 (forerunner to a telephone jack) from which a cord ran up to the telephone through a small hole drilled in the back of the shelf.<\/p>\n<p>They were generally fabricated about 14&#8243; wide, so as to fit in the space between two wall studs, very much like an ironing board cabinet or medicine chest.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve worked on a lot of different houses over the years, from all different ages, and this is the first example of this feature that I&#8217;ve encountered, but I&#8217;ve been told by the client that others exist\u00a0 in this same neighborhood, where many of the houses were built in the 1930&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone would like to see more examples, I did an online search for telephone niches, and found a blog about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.searshomes.org\/index.php\/tag\/old-phone-niches\/\">Sears Houses<\/a> that displays a variety of telephone niches (different from this one)\u00a0 that could be ordered. So if anyone has one in their home that is different from this one, I would greatly appreciate hearing about or seeing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an architect who enjoys working with older and historic structures,\u00a0 I sometimes\u00a0 come across unique and interesting construction features or details that I would like to share with people, and hopefully, heighten someone&#8217;s awareness of and appreciation for the amazing diversity of our built environment. One such detail I encountered in a brick bungalow [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2921,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions\/2921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyleesarchitect.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}