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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn 19th Century You Rented A Bed/Not A Room/ You Shared A Bed With Others.
On Colorado Experience program the featured story was about the Hotel De Paris in Georgetown,, Colorado. During the feature it was mentioned that early hoteliers rented you a bed and not a room. So it was common that you had another guest with you in the same bed.
Just a funny anecdote. Just imagine that.
JI7
(89,172 posts)Mariana
(14,847 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)Most cities were full of Single Room Occupancy apartments (think old 1930s movies, where the bed folds down from the wall) with a single shared bathroom for the floor.
Also, the average new house in 1950 was... 850 square feet. It's something like 2000 sq ft now.
raccoon
(31,088 posts)When I was a kid, most of my classmates lived in a house with one bathroom for sometimes five or six people, two parents and three or four kids.
And like most of my classmates, I had to share a room with a sibling. That is one thing I really envy the younger folks. Many of them seem to take it for granted that every kid has their own bedroom.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)900 sq ft house. We were middle class, at the time.
I'm not sure that's even legal now in a lot of places now, and good luck finding any house that small built in the last 40 years.
Laffy Kat
(16,354 posts)That little girl ended up sharing a bed with a gun slinger. I was aghast. Loved that remake.
Progressive Law
(617 posts)I believe she was just in town to witness the hangin'.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,746 posts)Bed space was rented, and you'd typically sleep with a stranger. Maybe more than one. Our standards of privacy, separate bedrooms, separate beds are rather recent.
I was born in 1948. I'm the third of six children, three boys, three girls. I didn't have a bed to myself until I was 16 and my older sister got married.
Had it been up to me, I'd have put my two sons into the same bedroom, and used the extra as their toy/playroom.
pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Progressive Law
(617 posts)...in the movie True Grit (2010). She had to share a bed with Mama Turner at the Monarch Boarding House!!!
cbdo2007
(9,213 posts)I read a lot of books about mid-1800s America and things like this are mentioned often. Even Lincoln and his roommate lived in the same bed, setting off rumors that he was gay when that was just the norm back then as culture wasn't sexualized to levels near what they are now.
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)I am to the point that when traveling a room is not enough. Nowadays I rent flats as much as rooms!
Le Gaucher
(1,547 posts)Montreal or Paris for a week or two.
I can stretch out ..Me and my wife sleep in separate beds. ...( As I toss and turn around a lot that disturbs my wife who is a really light sleeper)
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)Was there for a week last fall. Across from La Madeleine. In a nice flat. Cheaper than a good hotel and we could go to the markets and I cooked several times.
Thank to my CPAP the wife and I can sleep together. That thing saved my life!
I use trip advisor and have had good luck on 8 French apartments.
eleny
(46,166 posts)When my grandmother first came to America around 1913 she lived with her aunt and uncle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Grandma worked for her aunt in the boarding house. I recall her commenting how those beds were always warm. Meaning that a different man slept in them day and night. They worked different shifts so one man would sleep in a bed by day and another at night. There were lots of factories in the area and many single immigrant men who needed supper and a bed.
Grandma said she came to America because she disliked farm work on the family farm in Lithuania. She was eager to emigrate. But she never worked so hard as she did in the boarding house.