The Kitchen

The Kitchen. . The unpainted frame structure in front of you is likely on the site of the Harper family's original kitchen. Before the widespread use of stoves, kitchens were often detached to avoid lighting cooking fires inside homes. An exterior kitchen kept the oppressive heat and foul odors away from the Harpers in the "big house." Enslaved women would have used the side doors behind you as they went abut their work of preparing and serving meals., In the antebellum South, a detached cookhouse also put a barrier between kitchen labor and the Harper house, which also helped to reinforce a separation between the free and enslaved people living on this land., "...the servants prepared the meals, away down in the kitchen and took them up to the 'Big House' as they expressed it." - Mary Harper, 1905, (captions) , Access to electricity, gas, and plumbing in the 20th century allowed homeowners to move their kitchens inside. Kitchen outbuildings were repurposed or demolished. This historic frame building was relocated from elsewhere on the farm to stand in for the original Harper kitchen. here it is shown during the early 1960s. North Carolina Museum of History, During the 1920's, an interior kitchen was built on the west side of the house. The addition was removed shortly after this ca. 1960 photo was taken. North Carolina Museum of History