Photo of the Week
by Freeman F. & Mary Daniels Brown
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
Week of June 24, 2001
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In Colonial times, Americans cooked in the fireplace. By the early 1700's, some houses built by prosperous families had a beehive oven incorporated into the brickwork of the kitchen fireplace. The Sands-Willets House (circa 1735) in the Town of North Hempstead on Long Island had a beehive oven. The page linked to describes how the oven was used. The Kirch House (circa 1750) in Warren, New Jersey is another such dwelling. A wood fire within the oven heated the oven wall. When the oven was hot enough to singe a feather (or the hair on the forearm), the ashes were raked out. Bread or pies placed in the oven were baked by the residual heat in the oven wall. The wood burning kitchen stove ended the days of the beehive oven.
The beehive oven pictured above is in the William Conner House (1823) in Fishers, Indiana. The August 27, 2000 Photo of the Week contains a picture of the William Conner House, the crown jewel of Conner Prairie, an open-air living history museum.