Q for all you old firemap experts on ovens and outhouses

[deepskyal]

I was zooming in on one of the old firemaps from 1912 and don't know how I missed these before, but all the houses in this block have what appears to be ovens in the back yard. Actually, half the town is like this.

This section of town was built in the 1850's, 60's. It's a designated historic district just a couple blocks over from me. From the research I've done, most of these houses were company houses and were for the soilders returning from the war with prospects of getting a job at the huge factory.
I know for a fact, even my house, at one time, had an outhouse. I talked to one of my neighbors and she was pointing out to me where all the outhouses were in the alley. Not actually in the alley, but the yards by the alley.

It may be hard to see in the pic, I had a hard time trying to get a .pdf to a .jpeg at a decent size, but I think you'll get the jist of the houses and the back porches, then the back yard.
Along the back portion of the yards, which are shared by the duplex, is a small squared off area with a circle in between them, labled ovens.

I'm thinking maybe those squares are possibly outhouses...but next to ovens?

Anybody that may have come across this, I'd sure like to hear what these are. Whatever they are...seems like a place in a back yard to detect.

Al

 

[sqwaby]

Maybe they weren't ovens, could they have been for burning trash. Also the possibility that people got the trash fire good and hot then through in any solid waste from the privy, man that would have really smelled bad!!

 

[chemist100]

Is this an example of the Sanburn maps? If it is, I have a map legend and a may key. It shows what all the symbols are.

 

[deepskyal]

yes, it is off one of Sanborn's maps.

I'll check the ledgend...didnt think of that.

Al

 

[Lowbatts]

Have you never heard of a summer kitchen? These were a common item for some areas during a few building eras in the pre-AC past.

 

[deepskyal]

Can't say I ever did hear of one..(summer kitchen).

I was talking to our job forman today and he suggested a similar idea with a place to cook.

Maybe since it was company housing, built by the local salt works, the row houses did indeed cook outdoors. Without running gas lines, back in the 1850's, to the workers houses, they simply ran shorter lines to an outdoor area along the alleys.

I just never thought of the idea since when I was just a boy of around 5 or 6, back in 1960, the house I grew up in was 100 years old then...so that means it was built around 1860. We didn't have any kind of outdoor cooking area and the yard was pretty much up against a hillside.
We didn't have furnaces back in those days. Well, maybe some houses did...but not ours. Gas stove in the livingroom heated the downstairs and there were vents in the floor to allow heat up into the bedrooms.

I don't know how long the house had gas. Never even thought to ask about it. I guess sometimes we just take some things for granted...like everyone had gas stoves in the house. I forget sometimes visiting a friend I had in the army that lived in Manassas Virginia before it became developed. They lived at the base of Bull Run Mountain. And you talk about "hills folks"...they were them. Cooked on an old wood stove in the house. Seems everyone there had some serious coughing problem from cooking and heating their house by burning wood indoors.

Now that I think about that house from the viewpoint of a TH'er, there's burried treasure there!!!

We lost the house because of a landslide. Whole darn hill came down against the back of the house and blew the kitchen right in. Mud and water and trees...that was a pretty awesome site for me when I was about 7 years old. I just wanted to play in the mud.
But the mud kept sliding like water and filled the entire basement before anyone could get anything out. God only knows whats still burried under the parking lot that's there now...lol...my grandfathers stuff, maybe some of his dads stuff.....

That will be an archeological treasure for sure some day. Someone will come along and excavate that and find all these pieces of junk shaped like tools, mason jars full of who only knows what...

But anyhow....back to the outdoor ovens......I'm considering it a possibility...just not 100 % convinced yet. I've seen some of the back yards and havent noticed any traces of structures in the back yards...but we've had some snow and I may just not have looked well enough . I'll keep plucking away at it.

Al

 

[boogeyman]

Sounds like some of the houses in L.A. My grandparents & several neighbors had what looked like brick barbeques with a fairly high chimney. If I recall correctly each house had one to burn trash in.

 

[mpostma]

Wasn't uncommon to have an oven in yards for baking in summer. Keeping a fire going long enough to bake the bread etc. indoors on hot summer days made things a tad uncomfortable. Here in Northern Michigan they weren't all that common, but in Southern Michigan where I grew up my grandparents house still had the remains of theirs overgrown with trees in the backyard.

Down in the South I think it was even more common. Any Southerners wanna wade on in?

Good Luck,
Mark

 

[Gypsy Heart]

This outdoor oven was donated to the society by a local Amish family. These outdoor ovens were common in the period before 1800 when most of the homes were logs and it was thought that an interior oven was a fire hazard. As stone and brick homes became more common they slowly were replaced by ovens in the home.


This oven operates slightly different than your oven at home. It doesn't have a constant source of heat while baking. When you wish to bake you build a fire in it, when the bricks are suffiently hot you rake out the coals and begin baking using the hot bricks as a heat source

 

[deepskyal]

Wow, awesome pic...thanks Gypsy Heart.

Now you got me scratchin my head wondering if some of those small sheds in the yards were the ovens converted for storage.

Becomming more plausable as I get responses.

As you can see in the map I attached in the beginning, these were row houses and my sister now lives in one of them. I talked to her a couple weeks ago about detecting her yard. Her place dates to the mid 1800's and it's pretty run down...

But I think once I get started anywhere along that line of houses, maybe like dominos...I'll do them all...

I do know that there is nothing in the map legend explaining exactly what an oven is in a back yard, but you folks sure are making this a mouth watering adventure.....and in walking distance for me.

Al

 

[Lowbatts]

At a family member's home downstate I dug a beautiful pewter plate, about 8" diameter with the A-Z alphabet scripted around it's edge. Most likely a child's plate lost outback near the remains of such a spot.

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Early communal bake ovens were not uncommon in colonial times......before the mid 1800's very few homes had indoor ovens for fear of fire and cost of fuel...baking was done in dutch ovens over the fireplace or outdoors in the warmer months.
Sometimes quite a few people in a neighborhood would share one oven...each housewife having set times to do her weeks worth of baking .....

 

[mpostma]

Deepsky,
I am fairly certain they didn't double as outhouses, lol. Would have made the bread taste like _______!

Sorry, long day and I just couldn't help myself.

Good Luck,
Mark

 

[deepskyal]

Deepsky,
I am fairly certain they didn't double as outhouses, lol. Would have made the bread taste like _______!

Sorry, long day and I just couldn't help myself.

Good Luck,
Mark

Lol...yea...kinda lost track of that part of my question. So where would the outhouses be in conjuction to these ovens? The original ones for the houses on my street were all near the alley and the maps don't show the ovens.

The houses in my area were built later, early 1900's and probably had gas to the house so the ovens weren't needed....but outhouses were.

One sickly thought I have about that is possibly an open sewer system of some sort. Not unheard of in these parts back in the late 1800's when whole streets of houses were being built.

My ex-wife's Grandmother used to use a bucket in the house, then transport it to where she'd dump it and I remember the tales of my great-great grandfather being ordered by the borough to install a sewer line, along with all thier neighbors, so there wasn't an open sewer in front of the houses any more. It drained into the nearby creek. Aaah, the good old days...

In their case, the sewer was out front because the houses in the row were built near a hillside and backyard plumbing was out of the question.

So....did maybe these row houses have an open sewer of some sort in front maybe...Ugh...couldn't imagine the smell.

Al