Coming Out of the Closet

Closets came to America from Europe.  Their use was for a room of privacy or to store art, valuables, books and for praying.

According to Lucy Worsley, author of "If Walls Could Talk":A History of the Home

 I think it owes a lot to the European tradition, doesn't it? You can see - and in fact, some parts of European history survive in America where they don't in the U.K. For example, the Tudors invented a special new room in the house called the closet, and the closet is a lovely little room. It's richly decorated. It's private. It's off the bed chamber, and it was originally used for the storing of precious arts and treasures, and it was used for praying.

It's linked to the rise of literacy. People kept their books in closets. And the pilgrim fathers took closets over to America, and still in your houses, that's a room where precious things are stored, but they died out in England. We don't have closets anymore 

On the United Kingdom's lack of closets

"It's not a room type that we recognize anymore. We have freestanding pieces of furniture called wardrobes that might be used for storing clothes. But those little square, dark, walk-in rooms don't exist in the U.K. That's a little piece of history that you've got that we haven't."