The Historic District

Has anyone heard of a screaming room? I know this sounds made up, but maybe not. I have a small room or oversized closet upstairs between two bedrooms. It opens into two bedrooms and an upstairs porch. It as wide as my washer and dryer, and as deep as the bedrooms. At one point it had a shelf and hooks on the wall, old but maybe not original. I found a room just like it in a historic preservation house labeled a screaming room. This one had a porch just like mine, although my porch has been enclosed. Did not know if the title screaming room was something real, or just a funny name used by the family of the preservation house. We have always wondered about this different room. I guess it could be a closet, but why the entrance to the porch from the closet and not the bedroom? FYI, this house has an unheard of amount of closet space for its age.

I have never heard this term but that doesn't mean it's not a real thing. Regional vernacular ? A place to walk with screaming babies so as not to wake the whole household ?

We were thinking that too maybe. It has doors to two bedrooms, one of which has a walk through to another bedroom. The walk through originally had a sink. Would have been nice to have a sink next to the nursery as the public bath and master suit is at the other end of the house.

The nursery noise buffer zone does make sense. One old house blog I read, the author often talks about her "weeping closet" where she goes to lament the decision of buying that house. I don't think that's as recognized as a thing as your screaming room, though.

Well there's those little rooms in churches that are called crying rooms - so why not a screaming room? Back in the day I knew some people who did primal therapy and had a small soundproofed room in their house so they could scream and emote without alarming the neighbors...... but that would NOT have been a victorian thing I'm sure!

I googled screaming room and all that came up was either recent stories about schools having a verboten soundproof screaming room used for discipline/punishment, or horror film references. I didn't find any references to old houses, victorians, etc.

My whole house is a screaming room. But that is because I have 3 daughters in their 20's. Like a three legged stool that always has one leg that needs repair, I feel like I am an ATM machine.

BUT!

It is possible that the screaming room has to do with child birth. Back in the day, orphanages had screaming rooms, and, in the age of the midwife, this room could have been where the mother gave birth, hence the sink.

My house saw 4 children born, starting in 1929, to 1943 with the grandmother being the midwife.
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Nicholas, I can relate. My husband always said he felt like George Jetson with his open wallet. We still have two of our four adult kids at home. They are a opposite ends of house and keep weird schedules, so now they have to intentionally spend time together. Before we moved here, we had 7 in a 1200 square foot ranch. That was fun. Not.

From your original description, it simply sounds like a vestibule that allows either bedroom to access the upstairs porch. I've seen similar arrangements in some larger houses in the Southeast. If the architect was trying to create a sense of symmetry or balance, there wouldn't be multiple doors going to an upstairs porch, particularly if it's on a side of the house that has high visibility from the outside.

My entire house is a screaming room. I yell at my house all the time