Where things belong, part 2

[ellarien]

In conversation on the way home, I was reminded of another of those odd little cultural differences. In the UK, the default place for the main phone in a home is in the entrance hall/lobby. I have no idea why, unless perhaps it's there for the greater convenience of strangers knocking on the front door and asking to use it, or because that's where one deals with outside incursions in general. If there isn't an entrance hall, or (as in the case of my London flat) the entrance hall is unfeasibly tiny, the phone will probably be in the living room. (There might be an extension in the master bedroom.) Around here (I have to be careful about generalizing, because my personal experience of people's homes in the US is limited to Arizona and Colorado), the main phone is most likely to be in the kitchen, which I suppose was handy in the days of stay-at-home, sink-bound housewives, though there'll be a phone jack in each bedroom as well. Of course, I've not seen many -- if any -- establishments in these parts with what I'd recognize as a hall.

Does anyone have any insights? Other places where the phone might be considered to belong, in the pre-cordless days?

Comments

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

In my Italian relatives' house, it's in the hall. I know this, because when I was in my travelling year, I stayed with them for a couple of weeks, and took a lengthy phone call from the man in Canada with whom I was deeply in love. I have a vivid memory of sitting on the floor, near the phone table, discussing the results of the Canadian elections, and of him breaking off to tell me that he couldn't believe he was awake at 07h00 discussing Canadian politics on an overseas phone call with the woman he loved.

I grew up in Toronto, where one would almost certainly find a phone in the kitchen, often mounted to the wall. My grandmom's main phone is still on a little counter in her kitchen. I also remember telephone tables for the living room/den/family room—little weird end-table things with a phone platform, and a space under the phone platform for the phone book.

[ellarien]

Oh yes, long conversations sitting on the hall floor ...

Though it does occur to me that when that convention was first established, phone calls were rare and expensive enough (hence brief) that it wasn't too much hardship to do them in an (often) unheated space with nowhere to sit.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Many California houses from before 1950-1955 have a too-small niche built into a hallway, where the phone was supposed to sit. But it's not exactly an entrance hall: it's a hall that all the rooms hang off of to the side: either all to one side, in the "railroad flat" kind of apartment, or off to both sides, as in the over-the-garage houses in the Sunset District. Otherwise, it's mostly an even split between livingroom and kitchen.

We have one of those telephone tables in the livingroom. Though we also have a phone in the room we call a library, and one in the parents' bedroom.

[ellarien]

Thanks for the datapoints!

The living room in my apartment doesn't even have a phone jack; there is an extension lead from the study, courtesy of the cable company because an early version of the digital cable box needed it, but I'm too phone-averse to bother hanging a phone on it except for the rare occasions when I need to be in there to make a call.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Living room in Germany, I would say. Today, it's most likely to be the study.

Signed, she-of-the-20m-extention-lead that misses out bed-and bathrooms and goes through everything else. Sigh.

[ellarien]

My mother's house has one jack in the hall; the phone lives there when not in use, but she has a long extension lead that can reach anywhere else in the house as required. (What there isn't in the hall is a power outlet, so a cordless phone is out of the question, unfortunately.)

[arkessian.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the UK placement in the hall nearest to the front door is related to the fact that for many years the Post Office (and subsequently BT) were the only agency who could legally connect phones to the Public Telecommunications System, and charged over the (standard) odds for extensions and the like within a home -- so it was cheapest to have the phone engineer hardly venture a foot within the house?

[ellarien]

That could have something to do with it. Oddly enough, the house we moved to when I was 11 had the phone in the dining room, but we had it moved to the hall as soon as possible.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

In our current home, the main phone is on the built in desk in the tiny hallway between the kitchen and the living room. Of course, it's a cordless, so the charger sits there and the handset's usually on one of the living room tables. There's also an extension in our bedroom, in the tv room, and in Jordin's workroom. Because it's a big old well built house and if you're downstairs in the tv room you can't hear the phone in the hall ring. There is a phone on a separate line in Jordin's office which he used to use for his business. Hmm. I wonder if we need to get rid of that now that he's no longer self-employed.

In our previous house the main phone was in the kitchen with extensions in our bedroom and in the office.

In my parents' home, the main phone was always in the kitchen with an extension in their bedroom.

MKK

[ellarien]

Thanks for the data points!

One thing about having the phone in the hall in a typical British house is that it can be heard from all over, upstairs -- as the stairs go up from the hall -- as well as down.