This home with its second story door is either:
- A former entrance to an upstairs apartment (Good lord, I hope there were stairs or at least a trampoline to help people make it up there)
- The third best deterrent to solicitors…behind a rabid dog and a chalk outline of a body on your front porch
- The former home of a clock maker who built an upstairs door for his mother-in-law to come outside to yell at him at regular intervals throughout the day
By the way, as someone who lives in an urban area, I’ve started telling myself that boarded up homes aren’t a negative thing. I just prefer to think of them as over-prepared for hurricanes should one ever hit Indianapolis.
At 2309 S. 6th Street in Terre Haute there is a business that has a garage door at the 2nd story. You can see it on Google Maps if you’d like.
Ha! I drive by this house everyday on my way to work. I’m always puzzled by houses that have a door on the second story that doesn’t really go anywhere. Maybe it’s a smoking deck.
I’d like to know the addresses of these houses. I love looking them up on Google Earth. Thanks
Second story doors were used in the olden days before air conditioning. The opening was used for cross ventilation during those hot Indiana summers.
I agree with the cross-ventilation theory. Plus, think of the furniture of the day. It was probably easier to get things up into a second floor that way than taking an armoire up the stairs. The one shown with the paired dormers might have a more practical and economical reason. If you divided your house into apartments, you probably wanted extra light and a second way out in case of a fire. The dormers and door look to me like they were added for that purpose.
Second floor doors were common on commercial buildings as they were on hay lofts in barns to get merchandise up and down. you can usually see vestiges of these with long iron beams sticking out above second or third floor windows
Although i have never seen it, i guess they could have been used for lifting furniture on apartments.