Hang on...how does that work?

Browsing through pictures of original Cape Cod and Nantucket houses, I started wondering about something.

Original Cape Cod house

So, theres's a big chimney in the middle of the house, right? But there's at least three fireplaces AND the stairs are inbetween two of those fireplaces and apparently leading to the third. How does that work? Since I couldn't just hop to the U.S. for a bit and take a look, I did the next best thing and rumaged through the Library of Congress archives. Here's an example of a house showing one of the sides:

Front room                       Kitchen          

Here's a cross-section of the same house showing the stairs and the chimney flues:

Front room                       Kitchen          

And so I had my 'Oh! So that's how!' moment. The flues are tilted at the same angle of the stairs. Wondering why I got to all this trouble for a silly little thing like this? Because it bugged me, and when something bugs me, I have to somehow figure it out or I'll obsess about it for weeks. Yes, weeks... I'm weird, I know.

Since I showed a floor plan of an original full Cape on my last post, I thought I might as well show a more modern floor plan for this type of house:

This one is from the old Sears Homes catalogue and they were popular during the 1930s, all the way to the 50s. A man named William Levitt even planned a whole community with Cape Cod style houses. It's called Levittown and it's in Nassau County, New York.

Levittown, New York