Lucknow Mansion was outfitted with state-of-the-art technologies. Considering Tom Plant’s interest in creating efficient workspaces in his shoe factories, it is not surprising that he would build Lucknow with modern, labor-saving equipment in mind. Here in the Servants’ Hall, we can see evidence of some of these systems.
The house-wide “interphone” system by Chicago’s Western Electric Company, for instance. You may have already noticed identical intercoms in several rooms. They are in most of the primary living spaces, which allowed Mr. and Mrs. Plant and their guests to summon a servant or communicate with each other with ease. Simply pick up the receiver, press a button, and it would ring through to the interphone in the corresponding room. This system only allowed for communication within the house or down to the stables, but the Plants’ also had a telephone in the house for outgoing calls and to communicate with the gate lodges.
If you look around the baseboard trim in this room, you should notice a circular metal outlet. This is an outlet for the central vacuum system, which was installed as part of the mansion’s original construction. The central vacuum system was manufactured by The United Electric Company of Ohio. The United Electric Company (or TUEC) made a range of vacuum models. Lucknow’s is a model 240 – top of the line for domestic architecture – which was powered by a 1.5 horsepower motor. The system would have come with a 50-foot rubber hose and a variety of cleaning attachments for all manner of cleaning.
Of course, the housemaids would have been responsible for keeping the mansion clean. By plugging the vacuum hose into any one of the 10 outlets throughout the mansion, one could eliminate dirt and dust much more efficiently than by sweeping alone. An advertisement from 1921 claimed that a TUEC stationary vacuum saved “50 per cent of the cost of cleaning, while assuring more thorough sanitation than ever possible before.”
