When I moved into my charming 1940-something house a couple of years ago, one feature immediately caught my eye—a strange little nook tucked away in the hallway. It wasn’t particularly deep, maybe three feet high at its peak, with an oddly triangular shape that tapered toward the top. For five long minutes, I stood there staring, utterly baffled. What was this for? Too shallow for a bookshelf, too awkward for a vase (trust me, I tried). Months went by, and it sat empty—silent, mysterious, taunting me.
Then, one fateful day, while scrolling through an old-house forum, WHAM! There it was: a photo of a nearly identical niche… housing a rotary phone.
Cue the lightbulb moment. It was a vintage telephone niche , designed specifically to cradle the household’s sole phone back when phones weren’t sleek devices that fit in your pocket but bulky contraptions tethered to walls. And just like that, I was hooked.
