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1767 J. Woolfe Vitruvius Britannicus IV. 7/1 The next plate, which is a single one, is the section from north to south, and displays the hall below on the basement floor, and the hall and saloon on the principal floor.

1800 Gentleman's Mag. Mar. 215/1 Below them, our view becomes shocked with the preposterous modern erections at the basement part of the South end.

1822 P. Stansbury Pedestrian Tour 2,300 Miles in N. Amer. ii. 51 A convenient footwalk leads over the stream, to Low's Springs, consisting of numerous spouts, contained under the basement-room of an hotel.

1840 G. Poulson Hist. & Antiq. Seigniory of Holderness II. 168 A neat basement moulding runs round the whole.

1864 C. Dickens Our Mutual Friend (1865) I. i. iv. 26 Down..stairs to a little basement front room.

1909 M. Glass Potash & Perlmutter v. 84 I seen the house, Abe, six stories and basement stores, and you couldn't get another tenant into it with a shoehorn.

1932 Pop. Mech. Oct. 648/2 Figs. 7, 8 and 9 show the progressive steps in building a basement game room.

1944 E. Lucas in R. Greenhalgh Pract. Builder ii. 101 Vertical damp-proof courses are necessary in basement walls.

1955 Bull. Atomic Scientists Feb. 48/1 A prudent man, he has prepared a simple basement shelter to which he takes his family and food and water to last for two days.

1974 S. Terkel Working vii. 430 He lives by himself in a tidily kept basement apartment.

1992 Old-house Jrnl. May 32/1 Tons of coal were poured through the basement window to lie in small black mountains until it was hauled across the room.

2009 D. A. Ladley Haunted Naperville ii. 61 He closed himself in the storage closet under the basement stairs, detached the gas dryer's exhaust tube, placed a bag over his head, and quietly died of carbon monoxide poisoning.