01.01.70
The standard in the main size of a closet in a modern U.S. home? A healthy 6 feet by 8 feet, which well-founded might be enough space for my admittedly large collection of shoes (gulp, peradventure 100 pairs), new cocktail dresses and vintage coats, with at least a corner left over for my allay’s stuff.
But the Jazz Age builders of our 1921 rowhouse didn’t have a duration machine to see what future buyers might like — or any inkling of what clotheshorses Americans in catholic, and I specifically, would become.
Which explains why, though the Mount Pleasant abode we bought last spring came with many charms (a cheery porch, crown moldings, honeyed antique floors), it lacked any sensible amount of closet space.
As in, over 1,800 square feet and two floors, there were two miserly, 3-foot-wide closets — perhaps enough rack dwelling for a 12-year-old boy who wears the same snowboard shirt every day.
Why did our new-old house have such negligible closets, and why weren’t there more of them? Did the flappers and gangsters — or, more likely, Harding-era authority drones — who had first lived here wear the same outfits every day?
Source: Express from The Washington Post