Coal for a Victorian-era House
When the Cross House was built in 1894 it would have had a coal-fed boiler for the radiator system, and a coal room.
There were also eight coal-fed fireplaces.
I just assumed that the boiler and coal room were in the basement, but over time I began to notice that the physical and historical evidence did not support this.
Huh?
Then one day, in a flash, I thought: Oh! The boiler and coal room were in the carriage house, and with underground pipes between the two buildings!
Last week I was talking with somebody who said their grandfather delivered ice, milk, and coal. I laughed! “Ice, milk, AND coal?” He replied: “Yep.” Then today I came across this image. Yep, indeed.
I also never knew that coal was also delivered in sacks. Or is that…ice?
Most houses had coal-specific chutes for coal delivery.
The interior view of a typical coal chute.
However, the Cross House has no coal chute. And nor any evidence of there ever being a coal chute. Or a coal door.
The original basement drawings show no evidence of a boiler, a coal chute, or a coal room:
The Cross House basement. There are a lot of windows. Not all were actually built as shown. But every window shown has, right next to it, a written description of the glass sizes. ALL the windows shown were designed to have glass. NONE offer any suggestion of being a coal door or coal chute.
There is also zero evidence of any blocked-up openings in the foundation for a former coal chute.
And an 1895 article on the house, quite detailed, never mentions a boiler in the house, although the basement laundry is mentioned.
Hence, my wondering if the boiler and coal were in the carriage house. This was actually a common practice. Indeed, many cities in America had central boiler plants servicing dozens of adjacent blocks, both for hot water and heat.
In the end though, I have no proof about my wonderings. But there is also no proof that the boiler and coal room were in the Cross House.
So, a mystery which will likely never be solved!
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The Tudor limestone & stucco mansion that we owned & used to live in when my son was a baby was owned by two brothers & their families & built by the family in 1901 (about 8000 sq feet)—w each on a separate floor & servants on top floor with back stairs for them to get up & down. They owned all the property on Warwick Blvd in KC from about 39th to 43rd. Boiler in basement & huge as beautiful radiators throughout. Coal chute to room for coal adjacent to boiler. There are still pieces of coal in this coal storage room. The chute was similar to the one above. Several fireplaces that used to be coal burning— I believe 6.
Coal chute & boiler evidence in Carriage House??
That is true of the house I grew up in, too – circa 1870s. I have wondered if the coal furnace and chute were installed later than the build date. I know the bathroom was not there when the house was built. It was a tacked on, flat-roofed addition with no basement under it.
My grandmothers coal entrance was just a window under the porch of her all brick home. It had very heavy fencelike wire with a wood inset to keep out elements. There was a contraption in the kitchen with chain that you moved up or down along the wall space to control the amount of heat into the room registers. He built it with masons he sponsored from Germany. He worked at the local brick yard and had two full bathrooms. The family moved into it around 1925. It stayed in the family until around 2000 when family decided to do a tear down. A true one family home. I did not agree with the decision to take it down. Grandma had a true pantry. Grandpa gave her the best of everything in that house. They fled from Germany.
Soooo….. we need a tour of the carriage house basement! Surely there must be evidence of the pipes that had to run between the houses.
Coal would have been available in bags. Anyone living in an apartment that did not have “central heat” would have had to bring in their own to feed a fireplace or stove. Delivery probably also cost extra.
I thought ice would have been all in blocks
Yes a tour of Carriage House basement to track down the evidence!
You will be disappointed.
When the carriage house was converted into a house circa-1921, the evidence of any boiler and coal room was utterly lost.
Indeed, the entire basement dates from the conversion. The structure originally sat on the ground.
I know the carriage house was moved, but is the original location still part of your property? If there were underground pipes running between the two buildings, maybe the pipes are still there underground. If so, that could prove your theory. My grandparents lived in a house which was built in the 1890s, but they lived on a farm so there would not have been any coal deliveries. There was a porch off of the kitchen with a door built into the porch floor. There was a ladder down into a space containing the well and a water heater. Originally, that was probably where there would have been a boiler.
Good idea!
Now I just need to track somebody down with a metal detector!
I’m excited!
I was thinking the exact same thing about pipes running underground to the original location. Yep. Time to pull out the metal detector.
Are there any pipes coming through the wall or floor on the carriage house side of the basement.
Years ago my wife and I built a house with a “satellite wood burning boiler” that helped heat the house and water. The wood was stacked nearby and didn’t need to be stored inside the house.
Very cool photos, thanks for sharing! I have often wondered about the daily details of coal-fired residential heating. It must have been quite a difference from the convenience of smartphone-enabled wifi thermostats controlling the gas-fired boilers and furnaces of today.
I puzzled over the lack of a coal chute in our 1913 home in Omaha for quite some time, until I restored one particular basement window, who’s frame displayed clear evidence of damage from shovel impact. I realized that the builder had avoided the cost of a dedicated coal chute by simply providing another standard hinged basement window. The original coal-fired furnace and any signs of coal debris had otherwise been long gone.
Our new (1926) home in Aurora, Illinois, however, has a conventional cast-iron coal chute and obvious coal-storage room adjacent to the boiler room.
I wonder when coal heating faded out? I’d guess with the installation of utility natural gas service? Rural customers not on gas service probably had to switch to propane and fuel oil at that point as residential coal delivery was discontinued due to lack of demand?
The house I’m living in had a coal furnace until 1965, then a propane boiler and hot water baseboard was installed, with a few old radiators in the basement. The coal was shoveled into a regular basement window. And the furnace was in the same room as the laundry, no idea how the whites were kept white. When natural gas came by in about 2003 or 4, the boiler was converted to natural gas. And then I replaced the still working boiler with a high efficiency unit in 2010 so I could get rid of the constantly leaking chimney and gain about 9 square feet of badly needed kitchen space. I believe great-grandpa, then grandpa and then my father trucked over to the coal mines in Morris, IL to pick up coal as needed. Just glad I don’t have to deal with stoking the furnace every day! Modern utilities are the bomb!!!
Hey, I know where Morris is! I grew up near Earlville, and now live in Aurora. My family still exhibits livestock at the Grundy County Fair in Morris (which was in Mazon years and years ago).
The equine lover in me really winces at putting coal and a furnace in something storing carriages, highly flammable straw, and living horses. Deadly barn fires were frequent enough WITHOUT adding a coal burning furnace near-by.
There was never a coal chute in my house. It was taken down the outside basement stairway. I agree with you though. I would not put a laundry room and a coal room in the same basement. Their whites would always be sooty.
My grandfather owned a very large ice and coal business in Washington, DC from the early 1900’s through to the early 1950’s. Ice for the summer and coal for the winter.
A coal-fired boiler was added to our house in the late 1920s. Before this, the only heat source, I imagine, was fireplaces. The coal boiler is still here … our house’s 1960’s owner abandoned it in place and installed an oil-fired boiler next to it. We also have no evidence of a coal chute. I wonder if it was delivered through one of the windows? (Each of our basement rooms has two windows.) Never a dull moment with the mysteries of an old house.
My brother lives in a 1910-era Foursquare out on his farm, which was built with a coal-fired boiler and radiator heat. In the 60s it had a propane boiler added in parallel, but with the original boiler left functional. My brother burns wood in the original boiler, and keeps the propane boiler set at a low temperature for backup when they are out of town. He’s had to make some of his own parts to repair the old boiler, as the manufacturer is still in business, but told him they “discontinued parts for those over 50 years ago” when he asked!
I was thinking the exact same thing about pipes running underground to the original location. Yep. Time to pull out the metal detector.
If the carriage house was really designed originally for carriages and horses, I also doubt that they would have taken the risk of mixing a coal-fired boiler with hay and straw. First rule in any type of barn is no flames of any sort as the consequences can be a barn totally engulfed in flames in mere minutes. Also, as Ross has pointed out, there would not have been a basement in the original carriage house as dirt/clay floors were most commonly used for horses in their section for good footing. And even though I understand that the current first floor has some wainscoting, this would not likely been original in the stabling section, although it could have been in the carriage and tack (aka horse equipment) rooms. Horses can be hard on walls of their stalls and so they would have been lined with something very sturdy like oak planks.
While I do know about barns and horses, I don’t have any good theories on the boiler/coal location to offer!
We found coal in our 1907 Oklahoman Queen Anne’s basement. It was under a Reg window by the Porte cochere. There was damage to the rain drip ledge thing outside. Maybe the coal truck backed into it? Anyway. Still have our boiler. It’s very steampunk. Lol. Have pipes but no radiators. The house was plumbed for natural gas in 1966 by the third generation of the original family. Supppsedly a few teen boys in our neighborhood were paid handsomely to go around to all the houses basements and get the boilers going at 5 am. Our house also has 3 fireplaces. Today we use open flame and radiant gas heaters and logs.
Ross!!! That first historic photo features two of my favorite houses up here in Rochester, NY. They are on Seneca Parkway, our Olmsted designed parkway to one of our Olmsted designed parks. Both houses have been lovingly restored by their owners (my friend owns the tudor on the right). He would be thrilled to see this photo…do you have a higher def version of it?
Here is a current streetview of it.