That awkward “Pittsburgh potty” in the corner of so many old basements wasn’t meant to be charming or comfortable; it was built for survival. In an era when men came home coated in soot, oil, and sweat, that crude corner of the house was where the mess stayed. Workers slipped in through the basement door, used the toilet, sometimes washed up in a crude sink or slop basin, and only then climbed the stairs to join family life, leaving the dirt of the mills and factories below.

But the real genius was hidden in the plumbing. Positioned at the lowest point where the sewer line entered the house, that basement toilet became a sacrificial outlet when overburdened city sewers pushed waste backward. Instead of raw sewage exploding into pristine upstairs bathrooms, it spilled onto cold concrete—disgusting, but containable. Today, most of those fixtures sit abandoned or removed, but each one is a small monument to a time when homes were designed around hard work, grim realities, and the quiet determination to protect what little comfort families had upstairs.