It used to be common to see tanks like these out here in people's basements. They were probably pretty common in towns, too. I'll let you guess in the comments what they were for. A lot of you probably recognized it right away.
We had one like this in our basement when we moved in and when it came time to move it out [a decade ago now] we had to haul it up some steep and narrow stairs into a tiny hallway and then out the door. I believe it took a very large piece of cardboard and a comealong attached to the frame of the basement door with both of us pulling and pushing. I'm pretty sure there was some swearing, too. No one was crushed in the attempt, but it's a day we'll never forget.
Our old tank is out in our barn, buried under some lumber, I think. We're still trying to figure out how to clean it out so we can take it to the scrap metal place.