The original bathroom in our 1901 farmhouse bears little resemblance to what it must have looked like 118 years ago. Subsequent remodelings resulted in a laminate floor, no tub, and a toilet precariously perched on top of a step leading to the attic stairs (which is a challenge for a toddler just learning the life skills of toilet use, and for nighttime trips by her parents). Devoid of historic charm, and not working for a family with small children (who take baths, not showers), we’ve embarked on a renovation – of which the first part is demolition.
Drwywall was the last layer applied directly to this plaster – the black gunk is adhesive left over from some other type of wall covering.
The discovery of today’s demolition is a layer of plaster, scored or tooled to look like tile. I haven’t been able to find out much about this process, or how common it was – and sadly, ours is in such state that it cannot be saved.
The house with the scored plaster in the bathroom.
An article in the July 1903 edition of The House Beautiful described a house (the house is shown in the above image) with “the bath-room is wainscoted four feet high with hard plaster, scored tile shape.”
This is not the plan of our house, but is similar – with four bedrooms on the second floor and the bathroom located on the middle of the rear wall. Circa 1916 Sears Roebuck plan.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the bathroom was always near the bedrooms – so in a two-story house, it would have been on the second story, far removed from the public rooms of the house. Wainscoting, either tile or bead board, was usually placed on the walls. (I imagine the scored plaster in our bathroom was only about four feet off of the floor, with smooth plaster walls above.)
Character is exactly what our bathroom was lacking – well, at least historic character.
Although most of the walls will be covered with fixtures – a bathtub, a separate shower, and a vanity – the wall that once held the imitative tile will be clad with bead board, which is historically accurate for the time period. (And there will once more be a reveal around the window woodwork – right now the layers of wall cladding are flush with the window surround, which looks so odd.)
A circa 1911 bathroom, from the New York Public Library.
We’re on day three of demolition, but our wonderful carpenter told me this morning that they will be ready to set the shower and tub bases tomorrow – which means I need to pick out a tub tonight! Although I would love to install a vintage tub, our budget (and our timeline) is limited, so an innocuous white modern tub will be given the place of honor…it will blend in nicely, I hope, with the remaining features of the bathroom that will be as historic in character as we can manage.
I was raised in an up-scale house built about 1910, designed by an architect. This tile was in the large upstairs bath but not in the smaller one downstairs. As a toddler, I found it fascinating. I’d stand in front of it and trace the scoring with my finger. The lines were not very deep, but the plaster was very hard. The scoring was almost 5′ high and painted an unappealing coral. The linoleum floor was black with streaks of this color. It was a large, roomy house made of concrete block of the day and finished in stucco. It was heavy with oak. The cost over-runs were also heavy. It was the last house the architect built.
Watch out for the black mastic! It might contain asbestos!
I have seen that type of plasterwork several times. I have actually seen it more in kitchens and breakfast rooms of Arts & Crafts/Craftsman bungalows than in bathrooms, though I have seen a couple of those. That is perhaps just due to how often bathrooms are remodeled. I have not seen it in earlier styles of houses; that also could simply be due to a matter of survival.
It is getting quite rare due to the horrid trend of gutting everything that everyone has adopted. No one is repairing, restoring, or recreating the feature, as tradesmen who can do such work are difficult to find (and considered expensive to pay), and the old DIY ethos that formerly characterized historic house restorations has almost entirely disappeared, replaced by trendy remuddlings purveyed from big-box home improvement stores, so no homeowners are doing the work to repair this type of plasterwork themselves.
Also, that black gunk looks like mastic, which would mean there was Vitrolite or some other vitreous marble/structural glass product on the walls. Since it is impervious to germs, Vitrolite was used in bathrooms. That would probably date it to a 1930s-40s renovation, though there is a possibility of the 20s or 50s. It would have had to have been removed and most of the mastic chiseled off before drywall could be affixed to the walls, so there would be no trace of it left in the bathroom. If you find any broken bits of a flat, shiny, opaque glass in your yard, you would have proof of my theory.