Nitch
'The "enclosure" is actually a cellar for a house. The niche in the cellar
wall is called a "cooling closet" in Pennsylvania. It was used to keep
milk, cream, and butter cool during the summer months. They may have been
used for other purposes as well. The few dated examples we have in PA, RI,
CT, & MA date to the 1700's. In the overall photo there is a square stone
structure in the lower left corner. This was probably the base to a large
chimney. If you poke around to might find brick fragments in this area. In
the past few months, I have begun compiling and tracking down examples of
this cellar wall niches. This is nice find and the first one reported from
a NY site. They are not common.'
James E. Gage author of Root Cellars in America: Their History, Design and Construction 1609-1920
Very nice blog, Matt! I found one of these cooling closets in Central NY 2 years ago. Click here for a link to the Rock Piles post on that structure.
ReplyDeleteSeems like if you were gonna have a cooling closet, you'd design it so that it would be on the North Side of the structure, not the east. Maybe at a few feet underground, this wouldn't matter....
ReplyDelete