I've never seen one in person, but I've seen a lot of Victorian house plans that treated the steps that way.
There could be several factors in play for this kind of design. One would be that the stairs needed a turning in order to fit into the allotted space and the turning fell in just the place for a kitchen door.
Another has to do with the then growing idea of keeping the kitchen separated from the rest of the house someway. This is one reason for butlerÂs pantries. The small room served as an area for storing china, washing stemware, etc., but it also shielded the dining room from kitchen views and smells. Most old plans IÂve seen that have this feature show the kitchen door say for instance, on the left back corner of the roomÂs back wall and the dining room door on the right hand corner of the front wall. You couldnÂt go straight through from kitchen to dining room without making a turn.
Thirdly, it keeps daily foot traffic out of the front of the house. This was the function of a back stair. In estate style homes the back stair was for servants use, but in middle class homes the family used it constantly.Family members, particularily the kids, could enter through the back door into the kitchen and use the stairs to get up to the bedrooms. If you didnÂt have a back stair, the sort of platform arrangement you have would serve nicely. The family could move from backdoor to kitchen to bedroom or bath without entering the clean and tidy front of the house .

Friends have an old cape with the same "feature." In their case, the doorway into room on the other side of the staircase (dining room) originally did not exist, there was only a wall behind the staircase. The opening was added later by the PO to facilitate access without having to go all the way around through the kitchen. The downside was that they now had to go up & down 2 steps to get to the DR from the LR!

Simple, the room was not deep enough to accommodate a straight run from where the stairway descended from the upper floor.

Honestly, it can't really be that they just didn't have room, because they could have put the stairway in a different location, or with a turn and a landing, or something.

That's the thing, it's definitely a deliberate choice because there were lots of other options, and not just "this is the only place and only way we could do this." There's no evidence at all that the front (smaller, base of the T) part of the house where the stairway is located was built at a different time than the back (top of the T). So it could have been designed to be turned 90 degrees with the bottom in the front part and the top in the back. It could have been placed in that same direction it's in now but in the back part of the house - if it were on the other side of that wall that it's up against, and just shifted a few feet to the left, there would be plenty of room both upstairs and down. Or it could have been put any number of places in the house if they built it with a turn.

I'm fascinated by it being a deliberate separation of kitchen space from living space. But again, not knowing what to CALL it means I can't research it -- anyone know what this sort of thing was called?

Also, if anyone has any pictures of other houses that have this feature, I'd love to see them! I'd also be interested in knowing the age and basic style of any house that was set up like this.

Is it possible that these are not the original stairs? My grandmother had a house with extremely steep stairs on an outside wall. At the top of the stairs was the upstairs hall, I could stand there and see the front door. My dad changed them so that the top 4/5 steps turned 90deg and ended a few feet around the corner. Much easier for my grandmother to climb.

I've seen them in several Chicago-area houses. It's an ordinary

In one untouched house, there was a door on the landing, and the door led to the kitchen. It made a lot of sense.

You have a wierd layout because somneone moved the kitchen and removed the door.

I've never seen a specific name given for that type of landing in any floor plan descriptions in my old floorplan reprinted books. I do have a list of web addresses for online books that have floor plans and descriptions. If you want me to email it to you I will. You could then check through them to see if any show that particular style of landing and then see if there's a word description of same.
By the way a staircase that has two sets of stairs coming from opposite directions that meet at a landing then continue down to the next floor was colloquially known in the 1800's as a set of "good-morning stairs". I saw sketches and photos in 2 old books.

I've seen that in 1920s Tudors in my area. I don't think there's any mystery to it. In one house I recall seeing the opposite -- the stairs landed a step or two below the adjoining rooms on the right and left, and you had to step up into them. But the bathroom at the foot of the stairs was flush with the lower landing.

Another thought is that it could provide additional head clearance for a symmetrical set of stairs to the basement below it.

We have the identical issue with the stairs in our old 1906 farmhouse-- only at the bottom of the staircase is also the front door into the house. (there are 3 other entry doors besides this one, not counting the basement, so we rarely use this door-- but it's there, and very convenient for taking long things up the steps.)

In our house, the basement steps are under the "upstairs" steps, so there's a through-hallway behind the staircase as well. So we don't HAVE to go "up-and-down" to get from our dining room to our study, but dogs and kids seem to love to have a "racetrack" inside the house to go around and around... :)

My cousin's 1960-era colonial has that exact same layout. Not handicap accessible, to be sure.

Thanks for all of the information!!

To follow up on a few posts:

glassquilt: "Is it possible that these are not the original stairs?"

Possible, but not likely. The house was built probably around the 20's/30's (not confirmed yet, though I'm working on it!), and it happens that my boss's best friend as a kid lived there in the late 50's/60's, and it was like this then. I know it's possible that they changed the stairway in the first 20-30 years, but I think it would be unlikely.

kennebunker: "I do have a list of web addresses for online books that have floor plans and descriptions. If you want me to email it to you I will."

I'd love that!! Here's my email address, mangled to ward off spambots --- NOTTHIStanama44ORTHIS with aol and com at the end, and take off the NOTTHIS and the ORTHIS parts!

cnvh: "In our house, the basement steps are under the "upstairs" steps, so there's a through-hallway behind the staircase as well. So we don't HAVE to go "up-and-down" to get from our dining room to our study, but dogs and kids seem to love to have a "racetrack" inside the house to go around and around... :)"

That is exactly how the house used to be, except the room in the rear left side of T that used to be the dining room has been closed off to be an additional bedroom. We plan on opening it all back up again!

Jannie: "Not handicap accessible, to be sure."

Yeah, seriously. We have a friend in a wheelchair and plan to build a removable ramp in the back, but when she's there she'll be limited pretty much to the dining room. That's temporarily ok since she'd likely be over for dinner & games, and that's where we'd be even if she wasn't there, but still it's one of the reasons - not just for her but for our own impending old age - that we want to open things back up downstairs.

My last house had this....as did tons of other houses in my neighborhood. Mine was just like yours, only mine had three steps up to the first landing....and then up to another landing, where it turned in a "U-shape" to upstairs. Our house was a foursquare type house and was built in 1913. It had dark oak trim, with a lot of craftsman influence in the staircase and built ins. My old newel post was almost identical to yours, except it wasn't as intricate at the top. My balusters were flat and medium width, no turns or details. I would assume yours used to be the same.

also, another difference, yours is up against an exterior wall, mine was in the middle of the house. My neighbor had a similar setup as yours....and he had a beautiful stained glass window at the landing.

Kompy

You need to buy this book (see link below), as that staircase is featured in it. You'll find it to be a most useful resource.

Your staircase was very common in early 1900s foursquares and other craftsman style homes.

In fact, your newel post is featured on the cover of this book.

Rose
author, The Houses That Sears Built

Here is a link that might be useful: sears builders' catalog (1910)

I have two old house books, one is Sears, but not the one that Rose posted above...I think mine is the 1926 version. They are fun to go through. Both of mine have floorplans, interior door and hardware options, garage options and some have interior renderings with furniture. The other book was "Aladdin Homes"....another kit home company. It's especially fun to see what home cost in 1925. $1800? Or if you want a deluxe, super big house, then you had to spring $3K!!!!

Here are the two that I own:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/048628591X/002-3989335-4910448?v=glance&n=283155

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486267091/ref=pd_bxgy_img_b/002-3989335-4910448?%5Fencoding=UTF8

I found one book that had a floorplan almost 100% identical to my last house. It appears that the back part of my kitchen had a walk in pantry with a window. I could kind of see where the house may have had one. Our last house also had a vestibule evidently. When we looked in the foyer, you could still see the plaster patch and the wood flooring patches! Why we never noticed it until reading this book.

Kompy

The house my exwife grew up in in White Plains, New York, was like that.