Growing up in a house that was more than a century old, I was used to its creaky floors, drafty windows, and all the quirky features that come with old construction, but one thing that always stood out—yet rarely got discussed—was the strange, solitary toilet sitting in one corner of our dark and unfinished basement.

It didn’t have any walls or plumbing fixtures nearby, no sink, no mirror—just a toilet on a concrete floor, sitting there like some kind of forgotten throne. We never used it, and as a kid, I simply thought of it as a weird leftover from some earlier version of the house. But years later, when I got into home restoration and started working on renovating other old properties, I began noticing that a surprising number of these century-old homes had the exact same thing: a random toilet in the basement with no accompanying bathroom. I couldn’t help but wonder why so many homes built in the early 1900s had this peculiar design feature.

After doing a bit of digging, I learned that this wasn’t just an odd coincidence or a bizarre architectural trend—it actually had a couple of very practical reasons behind it. One of the more well-known explanations is linked to the term “Pittsburgh potty.” These basement toilets were common in older homes in industrial cities like Pittsburgh, where many residents worked tough jobs in steel mills or other physically demanding industries. These workers would often return home completely covered in grime, soot, or grease from their labor-intensive jobs. So instead of walking straight through the house and dragging all that dirt into the living space, the workers could use a separate basement entrance, go directly to the basement toilet, clean up, and change clothes before heading upstairs.

It was a smart, sanitary way to keep the rest of the home clean while still giving hard-working residents a functional space to freshen up. But the story doesn’t end there. As it turns out, the reason for basement toilets wasn’t just about hygiene and convenience for steelworkers—it was also about plumbing practicality. Across many parts of North America, especially before World War II, sewer systems were still in their early stages of development. The infrastructure just wasn’t built to handle the rapid urban expansion and population growth that cities were experiencing. According to experts like the Calgary Real Estate Board, many early city sewer systems were unreliable and prone to frequent backups. When these backups occurred, sewage didn’t just stay in the pipes—it came into the house. And where would it show up? At the lowest possible point in the plumbing system.

That’s where the basement toilet came in. These toilets were typically placed right above where the sewer line entered the home from the street, effectively acting as a pressure release valve. So if a backup happened, the sewage would overflow from that low basement toilet rather than from a toilet, sink, or tub in a main-floor or second-floor bathroom. This made cleanup far easier, especially since basements were usually unfinished, with concrete or stone floors, and primarily used for storage. The presence of a basement toilet meant avoiding major damage to the finished and frequently used parts of the home. It was a clever preventative measure, especially for an era when plumbing systems were still catching up to modern needs. Today, most of these so-called “Pittsburgh potties” have either been decommissioned, removed altogether, or left to sit unused for decades. Some homeowners choose to build proper bathrooms around them, turning that random basement fixture into a functional space, while others simply leave them as a curious relic of the past. But the next time you’re touring an old house or poking around in a basement and stumble across a lonely toilet in the corner, you’ll know it’s not as random as it seems. That old fixture actually tells a smart, resourceful story about how homes adapted to both the demands of daily life and the limitations of early infrastructure. What once seemed like a strange, out-of-place detail now stands as a reminder of how practicality shaped the homes we still live in today.