Well, no neat stories, but a little bit of truth. Closets were indeed sometimes taxed--as rooms. Your tax was determined by the number of rooms in your house. There were also additional taxes for certain luxury items such as mirrors and chandeliers. Whether closets were counted as rooms or not, or taxed or not, varied by locality. Mainly, old houses lack closets simply because the idea hadn't caught on yet. People used furniture for storage (chests, wardrobes, etc.). The pantries, buttries and other walk-in service areas of large old houses gradually evolved into the closets for personal storage use, but not really until the turn of this century. Christen Runge [log in to unmask]