The Toilet Tour- Online version!

-Preservation Raleigh

On November 16, 2025, Preservation Raleigh welcomed nearly 150 history lovers to explore a unique side of our city’s architectural heritage: The history of sanitation and water in Raleigh – aka The Toilet Tour. This unique experience offered a rare glimpse into the ingenuity, challenges, and shifting standards of comfort and hygiene across more than two centuries.

Here’s a look at the six historic stops that opened their doors—and their privies—to us:

Back of the Mordecai House, with the attached outhouse on the left. Photo by Dana Deaton

Mordecai Historic Park

Our tour began at the oldest house in Raleigh in its original location, the 1785 Mordecai House. For the family and enslaved community who lived here, water came from the nearby spring, and bathing was a matter of filling portable tubs—like the charming “hat tub” in the nursery—bucket by bucket. Sanitation relied heavily upon chamber pots used indoors at night, and exterior outhouses during the day.

However, the Mordecai property also hosts a unique piece of early 20th-century technology: the Vogel Frost Proof Toilet. Installed in an outhouse connected to the back of the home around 1910, this fixture was specifically designed to handle harsh Southern winters. Its impressive ingenuity lay in its self-draining system: the entire water reservoir sat below the frost line, and the bowl remained dry. Flushing worked on a pressure mechanism when the user stood up, flooding the bowl and washing waste straight into the ground. While a clever solution to freezing pipes, this design eventually fell out of favor due to concerns over sewage backflow, leading cities like Dover, Delaware, to ban its installation entirely by the 1950s. It stands today as a fascinating relic of a technological solution that ultimately gave way to modern indoor plumbing.

Lamar Hall

Stepping into Lamar Hall, a superb example of Queen Anne architecture built in 1896, visitors immediately encountered the challenges of early city utilities. The house was initially built without indoor plumbing, relying on a well and outhouse. When Raleigh’s water system finally reached this neighborhood around 1905, bathrooms were hastily added.

The feature that captures the most attention is the Mauretania Toilet, made by the Canadian company Crane around 1908. Named after the famous British ocean liner, the toilet features a characteristic high tank. This design wasn’t just aesthetic; it was a practical necessity. Due to the era’s poor city water pressure, the high tank used Newton’s law of gravity to generate a more forceful flush, ensuring a clean operation. While this specific toilet was originally installed in the nearby Strong-Stronach House, it is representative of early period plumbing fixtures. Visitors also admired the restored interiors, including the original clawfoot tub, William Morris wallpaper, and beautiful encaustic tile from Nicaragua.

Caraleigh Mill Village Privy

Caraleigh is Raleigh’s last remaining mill village, and a rare survivor of early workers’ housing. In 1892, a group of local power brokers built Caraleigh Mills on Maywood Ave, proximate to the Norfolk-Southern rail line and Walnut Creek. Shortly thereafter, the mill began building housing for workers directly adjacent to their operations. As production grew and the mill prospered, housing was extended eastward in a planned development. As a quintessentially self-sufficient mill village, this tight-knit community grew to include a company store, school, church, and cemetery.

Despite being in sight of the 1887 municipal pump house and 1941 water treatment plant, Caraleigh did not have running water until it was annexed by the city on December 31, 1957. Until this time, residents relied upon outhouses and individual hand pumps, drawing water from private wells. Post-annexation, rear porches were either enclosed or bedrooms were partitioned to create a modern, indoor bathroom.

Visitors on the tour saw a rare vestige of this bygone past: the original, detached privy for the ca. 1928 Pearce-Hamilton house, later converted for storage. They heard the story of this special neighborhood, the house’s recent historic rehabilitation, and water infrastructure changes in Caraleigh, a working class neighborhood representing a remarkable chapter in Raleigh’s industrial and social history.

The Historic Pump House (1887 Water Pumping Station)

Our stop at the origin point of Raleigh’s modern municipal water system was the Historic Pump House on Fayetteville Street. Built in the same pivotal year as the Raleigh Water Tower – also featured on the route – this weathered brick structure marked the city’s first centralized water supply, drawing water directly from Walnut Creek. While the building is in a deteriorated state and the interior cannot be safely accessed, tour guide Ed Buchan, from the City of Raleigh Water Department, provided an exclusive, behind-the-scenes peek, allowing visitors to walk through the gate and up close to the structure.

Tour participants learned about the technical innovations of the 1880s system and how the city’s water infrastructure has evolved over time – gaining perspective on Raleigh’s current practices, and the needs that will shape its future. The location itself tells a powerful story of transition, as the 1887 Pump House sits adjacent to the E.B. Bain Water Treatment Plant. Completed in 1940, E.B. Bain vastly improved Raleigh’s capacity for sanitation, water quality, and public health, serving in this capacity until 1987. The E.B. Bain Water Treatment Plant is now privately owned, and has been designated as one of Preservation Raleigh’s ‘Places in Peril.’ It’s a prime candidate for an exciting adaptive reuse project, symbolizing the ongoing need to preserve and repurpose our city’s industrial heritage. The City of Raleigh still owns the historic 1887 Pump House.

The Raleigh Water Tower

Our exploration of utility and architecture continued at the Raleigh Water Tower (115 W Morgan St). Built in 1887 at a cost of $14,000, this imposing 85-foot-tall octagonal structure served as the city’s main water supplier for 37 years. Designed with a two-story office building in the front, the tower itself was built with rough granite blocks on the lower portion and an upper portion of brick, and once supported a massive 100,000-gallon iron water tank at the top. After the city abandoned the tower in 1924, it was slated for demolition.

Its fate changed dramatically in 1938 when prominent architect William Henley Dietrick purchased the property. Dietrick saw potential, gutting the interior, removing the tank and timbers, and transforming the shell into his own office and a professional laboratory for young architects. This transformative action proudly marked Raleigh’s very first adaptive reuse project, saving a crucial piece of Raleigh’s history. Inside, Dietrick created four distinct levels in the tower, each a single octagonal room.

The tower’s legacy continued when, in 1963, Dietrick generously donated the building to the NC Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The AIA used it as their headquarters, further solidifying its importance to the architectural community. In 1968, the tower was rightfully designated a Raleigh historic site. Today, it remains a powerful symbol of preservation through innovation, currently home to escape room The Tower Escapes, one of our generous sponsors, and a shining example of how historic infrastructure can be given a second (and third!) life.

Haywood Hall

Haywood Hall is a veritable treasure trove of early Raleigh history. Built ca. 1800 by enslaved laborers for John Haywood, longtime State Treasurer and Raleigh’s first mayor, it holds the distinction as the oldest residence still standing on its original foundation within the original city limits. It played an important social and political role in early 19th-century Raleigh, as legislators and dignitaries were frequently entertained there.

While the interior was assuredly dazzling, the stop’s star attraction was located outside: a small, detached privy, or “necessary house,” dating to the very early 20th century. Tucked discreetly between two outbuildings, this humble enclosure holds what is believed to be one of Raleigh’s oldest (known) flushable toilets. While most of America still relied on pit privies, this toilet was equipped with an astonishingly modern gravity-fed flushing system, using water stored in an overhead cistern. This functioned similarly to the Vogel toilet at the Mordecai House, and represents an extremely rare example of early sanitation innovation in the South.

Thanks again to all of our attendees, docents, hosts, and sponsors for making this tour a tremendous success! If you have ideas for our next tour, please let us know!