The Gibson House Icebox

Have you ever thought about what life was like before refrigerators? In 1830, a new invention changed the way Americans handled food: the icebox. 

Icebox.
Gibson House Museum 2004.11

At the Gibson House, an icebox can be found on the ground floor. It is a large, dark-brown box made from hardwood that looks almost like a drawer or large chest. It has multiple compartments to store different types of food; the compartments are lined with tin or zinc to insulate it. It is currently located in the kitchen, but originally it would have been kept outside the back door of the kitchen, on top of a zinc plate. 

Ice harvesting began here in Boston in 1805. Ice was harvested in the winter from frozen lakes and ponds and was delivered from house to house by an “iceman.” Frederic Tudor, one of the Gibsons' neighbors in Nahant, founded the Tudor Ice Company and later became known as Boston’s “Ice King.”  

The primary location of local ice harvesting in the 1850s was Jamaica Pond. By 1874, the Boston Globe reported that the Jamaica Plain Ice Company was cutting about 5,000 tons of ice a day. Prior to delivery, it was stored in insulated sheds that could contain up to 80,000 tons of ice. Once the ice was delivered, people would store it in their icebox, just like the one at the Gibson House.

Charlie Gibson, Lodger

This blog post is part of an occasional series about the Gibson House Museum Archives, a repository of personal documents and photographs from the Gibson family. The archives are accessible by appointment; contact curator@thegibsonhouse.org to make arrangements.

In  1940, Margaret MacDonald came to work as a cook at 137 Beacon Street. Charlie Gibson, Jr. had been living at the house, largely alone, for the previous six years and from a statement Ms. MacDonald signed, it sounds like things were not going all that well.

Ms. Mary MacDonald’s signed statement, April 18, 1940. This was likely written by Charlie and signed by Ms. MacDonald in response to a dispute with a previous employee at 137 Beacon Street.

“I arrived at 137 Beacon Street, on April 9, 1940, to work as cook and house-maid, and found the condition of the kitchen dirty and uncleanly, dishes shelves and utensils not properly cleaned or kept. They showed signs of gross neglect by the cook who had last been in charge of them.”

A Housekeeper's Scrapbook

Domestic life of the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is illuminated at the Gibson House through its authentically preserved rooms and collections. One item that provides insight into the house’s history of domestic service is a paperback entitled “A Housekeeper’s Scrapbook.” Located in the kitchen pantry on the ground floor, the volume contains a collection of printed recipes, as well as loose clippings of other recipes and home remedies.

This scrapbook is a simple encapsulation of one aspect of servant activity—kitchen work—and is instrumental to the telling of the story of servant life during this time period. The meticulously detailed recipes reflect the specificity and accuracy required of a household cook.  

Many house museums like the Gibson House are constantly trying to discover more information about their domestic staff and making efforts to incorporate their stories into the site’s larger narrative. The history of servants, many of whom were Irish, is a significant part of not just the Gibson House story, but of Boston’s history. The wave of Irish immigration in the nineteenth century helped make Boston the city it is today.

By Emma Rose Cunningham, museum intern

Items from the Gibson House Collection: The White House Cook Book

The White House Cook Book

In the center of the Gibson House kitchen stands a table with a few objects on it, including a cookbook currently turned open to a page detailing various recipes for jumble, a ring-shaped cookie or cake. This cookbook is the 1905 edition of the White House Cook Book by Mrs. F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann.

The title page describes the cookbook as “A comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home, containing cooking, toilet and household recipes, menus, dinner-giving, table etiquette, care of the sick, health suggestions, facts worth knowing, etc.” Wondering what “toilet recipes” entail? As it turns out, homemakers could mix together natural ingredients for almost any personal care or beauty aid they might have needed: “hair invigorator, lip-salve, and instantaneous hair dye” are but a few of the toilet recipes in the book.

Collections from the Gibson House Museum: The Dumbwaiter

Lower end of dumbwaiter in kitchen pantry

The Gibson House was designed by noted architect Edward Clarke Cabot and was meant to exhibit both Victorian and Italian Renaissance style. As was common in nineteenth-century townhouses, the kitchen was located in the basement, where servants would prepare food and deliver it using a dumbwaiter. A dumbwaiter is a small elevator used to deliver food between the floors of a house. It lifts items using a pulley system, in which rails guide ropes in between floors.

The dumbwaiter in the Gibson House rises from the kitchen to a small pantry on the first floor of the home, where the “good” dishes are stored. The food would be sent up in covered kitchen bowls, then transferred to the appropriate china and taken into the dining room to be served.

The dumbwaiter evolved over time, improving technologically. Notably, Thomas Jefferson, although he did not invent the dumbwaiter, made significant improvements to the design. Jefferson built dumbwaiters into the sides of the fireplace in his dining room at Monticello that were specifically used to serve wine. During meals, a slave in the wine cellar could use the dumbwaiters to send bottles of wine up to the dining room, and at other times the dumbwaiters could be concealed behind their closed doors.

Upper end of dumbwaiter in butler's pantry

In 1883, George W. Cannon improved the mechanical dumbwaiter and patented the design in 1887. The mechanical dumbwaiter first became popular among the upper classes and soon spread into average homes. Today, the dumbwaiter still exists in older homes such as the Gibson House; however, in order to be used for its designated purpose it is required to be adapted to modern-day building codes and construction regulations.

By Jessica Mehaylo, intern

Source:

"Design and Decor--Convenience. Monticello. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. <https:/www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/design-and-decor-convenience>.  

Items from the Gibson House Collection: The Coffee Grinder

The 1800s and 1900s were marked by vast technological innovations, including those that transformed food processing. Such advancements made it affordable for families to own devices that made cooking easier.

The Gibson House kitchen displays a wide assortment of antique appliances that illustrate the way food was processed a century ago. One of these items, a coffee grinder (pictured above), would have been present in most middle- and upper-class nineteenth-century kitchens because of the beverage’s popularity.