Question about square structure in basement

[OldIllinoisHouse]

Hi all, I recently started renting an old house in the middle of Illinois. It was built prior to 1909, but I'm not sure how much earlier it was built than that. I'm wondering what an old plumbing structure in the basement is.

In the basement there is a raised square brick structure, with a square metal rim around the top, and with a rusty iron pipe in the middle of it. I can hear a burbling noise coming from the pipe, which makes me think that it's connected to the sewer system, but the pipe does not stink at all and I feel no airflow/draft coming from it. The pipe in the middle protrudes upwards from the bottom of this basin, which would be odd if this structure was a drain, since then it would not drain all the water from the basin. I.e. the top of the pipe in the middle of the basin is not flush with the bottom of the basin. Does anyone know if indeed this is some sort of old drain, or what this is? I'd love to know!

There is also a neat old antique hand pump on the basement wall not far from this basin. I briefly looked around but did not find a trapdoor or any other hint of a cistern though.

 

[Bcarlson78248]

My house was built in 1940 and it had a drain in the floor with a raised rim around it that was about 5" tall. It looked a lot like the type of floor "sink" that you see in large buildings for the cleaning staff to wash out mops or run water into buckets. The drain in the floor had a P-trap and a connection to the main sewer line. We jackhammered the whole thing out when we did a renovation, and replaced it with a standpipe for a washer and the drain for a utility sink.

The type of pump you have is what I have seen with a cistern that is built as part of the basement. Some cisterns have a connection running from the roof downspouts so that it diverts rain water into the cistern. In some cases the cisterns were also filled from water trucks that came by the house.

Bruce