Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/20/pittsburgh-toilets-in-san-francisco.html
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My wife’s grandparents had a house in the Sunset district and, while they didn’t have a toilet in the garage, they did have a utility sink that her grandfather regularly used as a urinal. (He was old and owned the house so I don’t hold it against him.) It’s pretty easy to understand the temptation to put toilets down there. Technically the ground level of those homes is designated as a “basement” (with the garage taking up about half of it) but people often use it as another bedroom or living area. Who wants to have to walk upstairs every time they need to pee in the night? Plus those houses are mostly one-bathroom, and that can sometimes cause stress even for small families.
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West coast version of the Pittsburgh toilet
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My grandparents had an open toilet and shower in the crude cellar beneath their northern Minnesota home. When I was a kid in the 1960s I never understood what looked to be a really out of place toilet down there.
I never knew the house without indoor plumbing, but from my mother’s stories I knew they used the outhouse until at least the late 1950s; and he kept the hand pumped well working all through the 1970s. So the toilet was obviously a recent addition, but its odd placement still stood out.
This story made me realize he added it just to wash off the iron mine dirt after the day’s work. He’d have come in via the outer cellar doors (where he tossed down the firewood) and cleaned up before going back outside and then into the front door.
TIL.
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oo ooo [gubby paw aloft ala Arnold Horshack] … my friend’s house had one of these in a Seattle neighborhood - built circa 1960. Mind you, this is pure conjecture based upon rumor, but he always said that his house was the first a few built in the area (and indeed they all had the same floorplans) and the first thing they installed after the sewer lines were a toilet for the builders to use. We used it between our innings of our haphazard games of softball in the nearby cul-de-sac.
edit for @NoamDePlume 's excellent point: yes, they poured the slab for the garage and basement (upon which the lone toilet stood) prior to building any of the more commonly occupied places on the floors above. …or so the story goes.
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Always have a backup!
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♫ When your house has only one bathroom, and your roommate took it up, sometimes you want to go downstairs, and take an urgent dump. ♫
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If it was for the builders to use, why didn’t the builders just make installing the plumbing where it’s supposed to be the first part of the job?
I guess if the house didn’t have floors yet, there isn’t a place to put it, but if it doesn’t have floors, it doesn’t have walls either, and I dunno about you, but I don’t want to take a shit in the middle of a job site with nothing built on it yet. At that point, you might as well just dig a hole.
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And what says you can’t erect some sort of temporary barrier around it until it’s enclosed?
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Subletting?
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I have nightmares where i have to use the bathroom and the only toilet I can find is one in some weird place it shouldn’t be. In the corner of a carpeted library, or in the end of a hallway.
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Seems silly to have a non-working toilet in the middle of the garage.
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My house in Minneapolis (built in 1910 ish) had a lone toilet in the basement. No cellar door so it (and the laundry tub) couldn’t be used as a decontamination station for the father.
It must have been handy for a family, tho. The dad of previous occupying families probably preferred using the basement toilet.
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…and it’s broken, too, right? Then I wake up & realize I need to express.
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Could they have been installed for some old tax or zoning loophole based on the number of toilets in a house?
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Alternatively, try to never have a back-up 
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OH yes, some times its broke some how, or the toilet is in the bathroom but somehow messed up.
WTF brain? Why can’t I be Boba Fett flying around in a jet pack?
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Where else would you keep your spare toilet? The attic?
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If the drain fits, plumb it!
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My father (born 1923) had a toilet in the basement of his house in DC growing up and when we built a house in the 70s in Georgia he put one in the garage, along with a utility sink. I never thought of it as unusual, but I did think it was funny the few times I opened the garage door while he was using it.
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