I Wish Every Home Still Had This Forgotten 99-Year-Old Bathroom Feature
In a world of builder-grade flips, seeing homes that still retain now-defunct features — from in-home razor blade disposal slots to Victorian stair clips — is a breath of fresh air. Watching how people repurpose these nearly extinct fixtures that were once everywhere is endlessly entertaining, but some of my favorite videos are from homeowners who are trying to crowdsource the internet to figure out what a fixture even is.
Case in point: a 99-year-old bathroom fixture that’s left its owners (and TikTok) stumped. In a video shared by @agoodkaren, the TikToker revealed they discovered an unusual built-in feature in the bathroom at a friend’s older rental home.
The bathroom appears relatively modern, with a walk-in shower, hardwood floor, and tan tiling. However, it has a hidden feature: A cabinet that, once you tug on the knob, reveals a pull-down seat that looks directly across at the toilet.
Revealing that they had never “seen anything” like the built-in before, the TikToker came up empty-handed Googling what the vintage fixture is and what it was used for. As TikTok chimed in with their guesses, I asked a historian to confirm what this bathroom built-in chair really is — and how people can re-create its function in their homes today.
Folding wall seats had a brief moment of popularity in California.
Several people in the video’s comment section guessed that it’s a shaving bench, estimating it to have been a popular option during the 1930s. However, design historian Maile Pingel told Apartment Therapy that the exact product from Peerless — a furniture manufacturer in Berkeley, California, that became known for built-in kitchen fixtures — was sold as a “folding wall seat,” per a brochure from 1926.
Pingel said that this type of metal bathroom seat could be used for shaving (especially as hemlines rose in the 1920s). She pointed out that many bathrooms from the time had seating because of norms of the time.
“It’s not a shaving bench, per se, although it could certainly be used that way and women did start shaving their legs as hemlines rose in the 1920s,” she says. “It’s really just a super-convenient fold-out seat. Seats of any sort — a chair, a bench, a stool — were often used in bathrooms… simply for practicality: at a vanity, putting on one’s socks, etc.”
While a modern bathroom user might just close the toilet seat and sit on it, this was not the case in the past, per Pingel. “It would have been considered unhygienic to sit on the toilet for anything other than its intended purpose. So, a place to sit was necessary. The example we see in the TikTok video is really a terrific example of functionality, keeping things streamlined, and maximizing space.”
How Long Were Folding Wall Seats Popular?
It’s unsurprising that many people have never seen these built-ins before, as Pingel said this design had a pretty short lifespan and never caught on widely.
“By now, probably most have been torn out in renovations, or they’ve been painted shut over the years and forgotten about,” she said, comparing it to the built-in laundry baskets and ironing boards from the mid-20th century. “This was a time when people wanted new and modern homes with every convenience and living made easier with purpose-built features.”
The manufacturer itself, Peerless (which she said was not to be confused with “similarly named steel companies in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the U.K.,”) was founded around 1915, “and by the 1920s had expanded into Southern California,” which was experiencing rapid population growth at the time.
“Peerless also made items like medicine cabinets, but their focus ultimately became complete kitchens with lots of built-in features they billed as ‘helpful and woman-pleasing’ — ha!” Pingel adds.
Are There Modern Built-In Pull-Down Shelves?
While you might want to think twice before installing one in front of your toilet, yes, you can still buy a version of these online; they are great for overall comfort and also accessibility in the bathroom. Nowadays you can mount pull-down seats in your bathroom, including directly in your shower, to give you a seat when you need one without compromising your limited space. You can also just buy teak seating for your shower.
Pingel says that the TikTok example was repurposed into an effective modern-day seating solution (despite its vintage roots), and calls it a “terrific example of functionality, keeping things streamlined, and maximizing space.”