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.

The Sound of Music: The Importance of Music in Victorian Homes

Listening to music within the home was something that was deeply cherished among Victorians of all social classes. In a world that was limited to objects such as music boxes to reproduce sounds in the home, live music was especially appealing. Many forms of outside entertainment were sought after, but attending these events could prove inconvenient given New England's challenging weather and limited transportation options. Naturally, it made sense to bring the entertainment into one's home, thereby giving rise to the presence of a “music room” within many upper-class Victorian houses. At the Gibson House, the music room is the most lavish room and was a place where the Gibson family regularly entertained guests and friends.  

Mason & Hamlin Symmetrigrand Piano, 1908
Gibson House Museum (2006.08)

The piano became an especially fashionable musical instrument to possess, either an upright or a baby grand, depending on the wealth of the family. Since at the time many popular songs were made available in sheet music form, amateur musicians could play to their guests and family. There is quite an extensive collection of sheet music at the Gibson House Museum, collected over the years by the family. Along with individual pieces, there are bound albums containing a number of miscellaneous works, such as polka music and waltzes. The majority of the music is from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries (1879–1934), and was largely published in Boston. (The name Oliver Ditson & Co. appears often, indicating it was, perhaps, the family’s company of choice when purchasing new music.) The Gibson family’s music collection contains many pieces by well-known classical composers, including works like Fugue in G Minor (The Little) by J. S. Bach and Danse Polonaise by Xaver Schwarwenka, which you can listen to here and here.

Matching Sailor Suits for the Gibson Cousins

Henry Freeman Allen, c.1918
Gibson House Museum (2006.18.20)

Until the end of the nineteenth century, most American children were dressed like miniature adults. Prior to age three, boys and girls alike wore “dresses,” or long shifts that were simple to get on and off and easy to launder. At about three or four, girls began wearing more elaborate dresses, like their mothers, and boys were “breeched,” or put into pants, like their fathers. 

Beginning in the 1860s and 1870s, however, specific clothing for children became popular. And one of the most popular, and enduring, outfits for young boys was the sailor suit. Queen Victoria dressed the Prince of Wales, Edward VII, in a custom-made sailor suit in 1846, modeled on a real Royal Navy uniform. The prince’s portrait was painted in this outfit and it set off a craze for sailor suits that would last into the twentieth century. 

A New Wilton Carpet for the Gibsons

In about 1890, Rosamond Gibson redecorated the front hall of her home at 137 Beacon Street. Her mother-in-law, with whom she had shared the house for nearly seventeen years, had recently passed away. And in the thirty years since the house was built, styles had changed. Rosamond selected an embossed, gold-leaf wallpaper, called “Japanese Leather.” She also chose a luxe red-on-red patterned Wilton carpet.

Wilton red-on-red pattern

The carpet was manufactured by the Bigelow Carpet Company in Clinton, Mass. Bigelow was a prominent name in carpets; the company’s founder, Erastus Bigelow, developed the first power loom in America. His inventiveness ultimately revolutionized the carpet industry, making quality carpets cheaper and quicker to produce. By the late nineteenth century, Bigelow carpets were a household name. Bigelow’s classic advertising campaign encouraged people to consider purchasing a carpet for their home and business, “A Title on the Door Rates a Bigelow on the Floor.”

The Wilton style of carpet that Rosamond selected was top of the line. Traditional Wilton-weave carpets have a thick, cut pile that resembles velvet. They were the most expensive to produce and served as a status marker in many wealthy homes.

Rosamond’s carpet held up well, but after almost 130 years of use, it became worn and faded. In 2016, the Museum’s Board of Directors, with the help of several generous donors, undertook a project to reproduce a new carpet for the Gibson House.

Aunt Mary’s Worth Dress

 Velvet gown with daytime bodice, Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895), Gibson House Museum (1997.111).

There is a gem in the collection of nineteenth-century dress at the Gibson House Museum. It is a sumptuous purple velvet gown, richly colored and trimmed in velvet ribbon and silk fringe. A drape sweeps off the waist and gathers at the back in a dramatic bustle. The dress has two separate bodices: one for day wear (long-sleeved with a high collar) and one for evening wear, with a low, square neckline. The skirt is stiff from a horsehair lining, and metal stays are sewn directly into the bodice fabric.

Likely made in the early 1870s, the dress is a pitch-perfect example of Victorian fashion from that decade. The tightly corseted waist and prominent bustle create a much-desired silhouette, one that shows off a more “natural” form in comparison to the large hooped skirts of the 1860s. In dress, as in most other things, the Victorians preferred a high level of specificity, and the two bodices signify the expectation of different attire for day and evening.

A Study in Contrasts: Renaissance Revival and Aesthetic Design under One Roof

Part of why the Gibson House Museum serves as such an integral part of Boston’s historical landscape is its ability to capture, under one roof, the shifts in decorative and sociopolitical trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Upon visiting the museum, you will likely notice a distinct change in decorative moods depending on which room you are in. The entrance hall, for example, is primarily decorated in the 1860s Renaissance Revival style that would have been popular in Gibson matriarch Catherine Hammond Gibson’s time. The console table and matching mirror to your left as you walk into the museum are both carved in ebonized black walnut, which would have been an expensive and highly desirable material. Placed in the first room the Gibsons’ guests would see, this Renaissance Revival furniture would have showcased the family’s knowledge of, and appreciation for, an older, revered age of artistic innovation and achievement.

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>.  

Logomachy: A Look at a Nineteenth-Century Card Game

Logomachy Box, courtesy of Boston Children's Museum.

While perusing the Gibson House archives for research material, I found an instruction manual for an 1874 children’s card game called Logomachy, or War of Words, designed by F. A. Wright, a games maker from Cincinnati. It appears that Wright’s game was well received, as he won the Highest Premium Silver Medal for Best New Parlor Game at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition that year (which is proudly proclaimed on the instruction manual).

The deck, which was not included with the manual I found, consisted of fifty-six cards. A single letter was printed on each card along with an illustration, such as a bird, wolf, or children at play. With more cards than letters, many of the letters were duplicated to allow for the spelling of words. The letters J, K, V, X, Q, and Z were prize cards and earned players who could use them to form words an additional one or two points.

Enduring Evenings

“The fact that our nineteenth-century forebears did not spend all their evenings speechlessly gazing at a moving version of their magic-lantern does not mean that they were as bored as we may be when deprived of the monotonous, habit-forming, visual diet that we accept as entertainment. Hopefully a happier and more enlightened generation of the future, having rediscovered that it is satisfying for man to do things for himself, may wonder how we endured entire evenings gazing at coloured lights.” 

I found the preceding quote maligning television as a form of entertainment in a book written in 1974 by Patrick Beaver entitled Victorian Parlor Games. Beaver was making the point that while we might sometimes look back on the Victorians and think they must have led incredibly stuffy and boring lives, they would not have thought so themselves. In his book, Beaver describes a collection of different parlor games played during the Victorian era that ,reveal that the Victorians  did actually enjoy having fun.  

Domestic Servants, Part II

George Goodwin Kilburne, Governess with two girls- 1873

Having servants was a status symbol in the Victorian era. Many households with a domestic servant only had one, who was expected to perform all of the tasks described in my last post. She cooked, cleaned, cared for children, stoked the fires, served meals, took callers, and served at the beck and call of the family. Domestic servants in these situations felt that it was too much work, and understandably so. Additionally, being the only servant could cause these domestics to feel incredibly lonely. Servants constantly searched for better household situations. More servants in a household meant a greater division of labor, which meant a more manageable workload for each servant. A position at the Gibson House, where there were sever servants, might have been quite coveted because there was an adequate division of labor.