So in the first few months, my days were filled with cleaning the house, and the evenings were filled with researching Victorian architecture. We wanted to bring the house back to it's glory. I studied interior design for a few years, and I was always interested in the "why" something was the way it was.
A lot of Victorian homes from the early 1900s have a similar layout. The outside of the house would have a front porch that would only wrap around one side of the house. There was an entry vestibule, and then the formal parlor. The front third of the house was formal, the middle was a bit more comfortable, and the back third was usually quite plain. The reason for this was that the front of the house was where someone would welcome their guests. It had the best furniture, the beautiful woodwork, and the most elaborate decorating. They homeowners would entertain their guests in the formal parlor. The middle sections of the house were the family room and dining room. This would obviously be where the family would relax and eat. So the decor was a bit more comfortable, the furniture a bit more worn, but still a very pleasant space.
The back of the house was usually the kitchen, the butler's pantry, the mudroom, and often times held the servants staircase. That staircase allowed the servants to get from the basement to the top floors without being seen by the family. The kitchen area was usually painted wood, bare floors, small windows and completely functional versus beautiful.
The front door was elaborate to show off to the incoming guests. The porch, as I said before, would wrap around to one side of the house. That gave an additional entry into the house for the family. Since the streets were dirt during that time, the family entered the middle of the house to save the rugs and wood floors from tracking in all the dirt to the formal area. Because remember, there weren't any vacuum cleaners at the time, so the rugs had to be taken outside to be beaten and shook out.
The servants would then enter from the back of the house usually into the kitchen area. The kitchen was the access point for the basement because usually only the servants would ever go into the basement. It also had a staircase that lead all the way to the 3rd floor, which was where the servants slept. That staircase wasn't usually seen by the family either.
The term "Victorian" has been modified and watered down a lot in the last century, to include many different types of houses. Some even add gingerbread designs to the gables of Colonial houses and instantly they are called Victorian now. So my explanations are more about the true homes from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.
Our house does have the porch wrapped around one side, and the servant areas and separate staircase. We even have the original servant's bell behind the swinging kitchen door. We have a door to the porch roof that was the "dust porch" where they would take the rugs from the second floor to shake them out, rather than drag them down to the first floor.
Architecture has always fascinated me, so I hope you enjoyed these explanations.
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