In 19th Century You Rented A Bed/Not A Room/ You Shared A Bed With Others.

[TheMastersNemesis]

On Colorado Experience program the featured story was about the Hotel De Paris in Georgetown,, Colorado. During the feature it was mentioned that early hoteliers rented you a bed and not a room. So it was common that you had another guest with you in the same bed.

Just a funny anecdote. Just imagine that.

[JI7]

1. i think this was described in Moby Dick

[Mariana]

12. Yes, that is how Ishmael met Queeqeg. nt.

[Recursion]

2. And in the early to mid 20th century you rented just a room

Most cities were full of Single Room Occupancy apartments (think old 1930s movies, where the bed folds down from the wall) with a single shared bathroom for the floor.

Also, the average new house in 1950 was... 850 square feet. It's something like 2000 sq ft now.

[raccoon]

10. Thank you. When I was a kid, most of my classmates lived in a house

When I was a kid, most of my classmates lived in a house with one bathroom for sometimes five or six people, two parents and three or four kids.

And like most of my classmates, I had to share a room with a sibling. That is one thing I really envy the younger folks. Many of them seem to take it for granted that every kid has their own bedroom.

[Recursion]

15. I shared a room with my brother for years, one bathroom for a family of 5

900 sq ft house. We were middle class, at the time.

I'm not sure that's even legal now in a lot of places now, and good luck finding any house that small built in the last 40 years.

[Laffy Kat]

3. I remember this on the Cohen bros. "True Grit"

That little girl ended up sharing a bed with a gun slinger. I was aghast. Loved that remake.

[Progressive Law]

8. I don't think Mama Turner was a gunslinger though.

I believe she was just in town to witness the hangin'.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Very common from the beginning of what we'd think of as hotels.

Bed space was rented, and you'd typically sleep with a stranger. Maybe more than one. Our standards of privacy, separate bedrooms, separate beds are rather recent.

I was born in 1948. I'm the third of six children, three boys, three girls. I didn't have a bed to myself until I was 16 and my older sister got married.

Had it been up to me, I'd have put my two sons into the same bedroom, and used the extra as their toy/playroom.

[pansypoo53219]

6. no central heating. your neighbor may help keep you from freezing.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Read Jack London's "People of the Abyss." Sometimes you rented the space under a bed.

[Progressive Law]

7. That's exactly what happened to Mattiie Ross in...

...in the movie True Grit (2010). She had to share a bed with Mama Turner at the Monarch Boarding House!!!

[cbdo2007]

9. Many times it was 3-4 to a bed...not even just 2.

I read a lot of books about mid-1800s America and things like this are mentioned often. Even Lincoln and his roommate lived in the same bed, setting off rumors that he was gay when that was just the norm back then as culture wasn't sexualized to levels near what they are now.

[GulfCoast66]

11. I am so spoiled...

I am to the point that when traveling a room is not enough. Nowadays I rent flats as much as rooms!

[Le Gaucher]

13. I have been doing it for over 15 years .. even before Airbnb.. I would rent an apartment in

Montreal or Paris for a week or two.

I can stretch out ..Me and my wife sleep in separate beds. ...( As I toss and turn around a lot that disturbs my wife who is a really light sleeper)

[GulfCoast66]

14. Yes. Paris!

Was there for a week last fall. Across from La Madeleine. In a nice flat. Cheaper than a good hotel and we could go to the markets and I cooked several times.

Thank to my CPAP the wife and I can sleep together. That thing saved my life!

I use trip advisor and have had good luck on 8 French apartments.

[eleny]

16. My great-great aunt had boarders like that back in the early 1900s in Brooklyn, NY

When my grandmother first came to America around 1913 she lived with her aunt and uncle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Grandma worked for her aunt in the boarding house. I recall her commenting how those beds were always warm. Meaning that a different man slept in them day and night. They worked different shifts so one man would sleep in a bed by day and another at night. There were lots of factories in the area and many single immigrant men who needed supper and a bed.

Grandma said she came to America because she disliked farm work on the family farm in Lithuania. She was eager to emigrate. But she never worked so hard as she did in the boarding house.