On Saturday, August 10, 2013 6:58:49 AM UTC-7, Brooklyn1 wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:41:12 +0100, "Ophelia"

>
> Most older city homes are plumbed for gas lighting... electric
> lighting is relatively new... as electric lighting became popular
> (only about 100 years ago) the piping was cut, capped, and plastered
> over... the gas piping is still inside the walls. The house I grew up
> in was built in 1911, it originally had all gas lighting, so did all
> the the houses around... some left the gaslight fixtures because they
> are so decorative, some were electrified. We electrified those in our
> entryway and center hallways on both floors.

In many cases, the iron pipes that fed gas to the overhead light fixtures were
used as conduit for wires, when the gas fixtures were replaced with electric.

Many people have forgotten, or never knew, that the gas originally used in
those "older city homes" was manufactured from coal. The Chicago gas utility
retained its name: The People's Gas Light and Coke Company long after it became
anachronistic. And this was the gas that, if you stuck your head in an oven,
would kill you.

Not that that was the only risk from "town gas." A chemical plant I once
visited, outside of Chicago, had originally been a manufactured gas plant,
and its soil still held cyanide from that earlier era.