I blogged about this a little a few months back on my personal blog. We’d been looking for houses for about ten months before finding our house. Since most of the places we were looking at were of similar age (1950s) size (1500-2500sq ft) and location (mid century tracts around Los Altos, California), many of them had similar features. Most houses that came on the market would have one or more striking original features that characterized life or design from the era in which they were built. Many of these things were fascinating, and usually absent in the bland tract housing of today (although I’m sure people were saying the same things about these places back when they were put up!)

Here are some of the favorite details I noted in some of the houses I saw:

• Intercoms - present in a good many places built from the 50s. Ranch houses are low and wide, and in the Los Altos area tended to occupy fairly large lots by contemporary standards, so getting everyone together either meant yelling at the top of your lungs or using one of these systems. The best systems would have MusiCall control centers like the one to the right near the kitchen where the other units could be activated, and the radio could be tuned. Our house has a speaker that appears to be for such a system but there is no actual evidence of the rest of one, so not sure. For a house of the size we have, it would definitely be useful and save yelling though.
• Dutch Doors - one place we put an offer on had a dutch door to one of the bedrooms. Another place we looked at afterwards had one on the front door. These are truly the most wonderful contraptions. They let air in without leaving your house open for all the world to come in. My aim is to find a place for one to go in this house.
• Dovecotes - these are less useful but attractive. As are the faux swiss chalet details that are also popular on a lot of places.

I will keep adding to this list.