Older Detroit houses without sink in bathroom question...

[Jimaz]

My grandparents had no indoor plumbing in their Nebraska farmhouse. Instead of a sink they'd use a rather ornate portable porcelain basin with a matching pitcher for the water. It was usually kept in the bedroom. My understanding was that that was the standard in the old days.

This is exactly it...everybody washed hands in the basin in their bedrooms.
The practice of the dresser top basin died out once everybody had sinks in their bathrooms.

Yes, come to think of it, it was on top of the dresser. Of course! Where else would you put it in the bedroom? This brings back so many memories.

They actually did have indoor plumbing—but just barely. The kitchen was the room closest to the waterwell-pumping windmill [[one of those iconic metal windmills that dotted the landscape of the plains). There was a pipe running from the windmill's waterbarrel to the kitchen sink's hand-operated pump. [[They should have elevated the barrel using gravity instead.) Their big woodburning stove had a compartment designed to heat water. For kindling, they'd use corncobs. Ahh! The smell of bacon comes to mind.

The house was ordered from Sears. Sans bathroom.

I spent many hours marveling over the ingenuity of that windmill. If the wind stopped, you could pump it manually. But it never stopped enough to matter. It was as green as you could get, way back then.