Regarding Pittsburgh toilets (a toilet installed in a basement with no walls around it, just sitting proud) there are theories. 
One is that in the original setup there was also a shower-head with the appropriate valve-set to supply it and a floor drain. The idea was the men coming home from the mills filthy from head-to-toe would walk into the basement, potty, strip, and shower without getting the house proper dirty. Another theory is that it was/is the very cheapest way to have a second potty in a house. Right there under the floor was/is the sewer line. BTW, the proximity to the sewer line explains the sometimes odd middle-of-the-floor locations of the comfort station. We owned a home in Meyersdale, Pa that illustrated another explanation. You could tell that until some relatively recent remodeling project the Pittsburgh Toilet was the ONLY facility in the house. The house was built around 1900 when the B&O RR was built so may have started with an outhouse. The Pittsburgh Toilet would have been the cheapest way to put in plumbing in an existing structure. For the [later] upstairs bathroom the sewer pipe was modern PVC pipe passing down through a corner of the living room, then covered with panelling angled across the corner.
Mike, as the saying goes: you done good! Very nice. Can't wait for a video.
What'd I do today? A little thing but pesky and niggling. In order to add traverse-movement to the 282 Gantry Crane I had to fit the winch-guts in between some structural bits under the deck. This required moving the car-spot several inches ahead. This in turn caused the Crane to block my view of the scrap pile in the mirror placed for that purpose. So today I moved the mirror and all is good again.
Before:
After:
