Doors to Nowhere

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In the town where we live, I’ve noticed a weird phenomena:  there are many houses with second floor doors that lead seemingly nowhere.  Well, they lead outside, but that’s it – no stairwells, no balconies, no screened-in porches.  Just random doors on houses.  Perhaps there used to be something there, maybe a staircase, etc.  It would be one thing if there were only a few houses like these, but in my town alone, there are at least 10, one being next-door!  In a town this small, that is a lot.  Actually, they aren’t all second floor doors.  The church down the street has one that is about 3-4 feet off the ground – enough to see that it’s a door to nowhere, but not enough to be on the second floor.  I wonder what the purpose of these doors are and why there are so many?  Maybe it’s something to ask the library historian about, or maybe some of you fellow NW Ohioans who read this blog and have lived here longer than I can enlighten me – people didn’t waste doors in Chicago!

6 thoughts on “Doors to Nowhere”

  1. I was just reading a comic (yes, single men are really just overgrown boys) and it had a house like this on a ski-resort mountain. The second-story door was the primary entrance when the snow buried the lower ten feet of the house. Maybe someone saw this design in Colorado or somewhere and decided it would look cool for Ohio.

  2. That could be…. seriously. I do remember discussing this in school or somewhere but do not recall specifics… YOU got me again. Maybe I can go cause another ruckus to add to “the neverending story” of the village hall. Not to be confused with the classic 80s movie. You must admit that it does make for good front page news when there is nothing better to print.

  3. Yes… who would have known there was BASKETBALL up there – now I think they SHOULD save it! LOL… interesting article, but a 1926 basketball game? That is kind of lame.
    Good theory, D. If I ever get back to the library, I will ask the historian. I suppose I could also email her… Maybe I’ll start by asking our good friends JO and CC – they know a lot about local stuff… though JO seems to have dropped off this corner of OH 🙂

  4. I’m not sure about the upper level doors. But some of the house in the area are hundreds of years old, it could be that parts of the exterior (porches, landings, or other stuff had been torn down while the rest of the house stayed up. I have two doors on the second floor of my house, I never got around to putting up the deck again. It went, bad, and then I noticed how much sun I was missing on the lower level. Light was good, deck in the woods, not too good with all the bugs.

  5. also an interesting theory which I agree with, however, the house next door that has one of these doors was built in 1920… which would still allow time for part of it to fall off, I guess, but not hundreds of years old…

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