Cloakroom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cloakroom, or sometimes coatroom, is a room for people to hang their coats. Typically found inside a large building, such as a gymnasium or meeting hall, it is long and narrow with plenty of pegs on which to hang coats, umbrellas, and hats.

Attended cloakrooms, or coat checks, are staffed rooms where coats and bags can be stored securely. Typically, a ticket is given to the customer, with a corresponding ticket attached to the garment or item. They are often found in Nightclubs. A nominal fee is generally charged, or if not, a tip is usually paid by the customer when they reclaim their item.

The United States Senate cloakrooms are how the parties interact with the Senators while they are on the floor. The cloakrooms control all the action on the Senate floor, including speaking time, order and organization.[1].

In the United Kingdom, an estate agent (the British equivalent of a real estate broker) will often use the word cloakroom to refer to the small, ground-floor lavatory of a house or to a secondary lavatory of an apartment. A cloakroom within anything other than a private residence can safely be assumed to be a place in which coats and other belongings are kept and the term is still commonly used in hotels, stations, clubs, museums and most other UK public venues in its traditional sense.

The name takes it origin from castles in the middle ages. The toilet was used to hang the cloaks of the occupants. The reason behind this was that the ammonia contained in urine would kill fleas and insects that would infest the clothing.