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Kitchen Buildings |
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Constructed
in a small single story building behind the Main Building, the
kitchen prepared food for all patients and staff. The kitchen was
connected to the rest of the hospital by a tunnel. Food was
delivered by cart to dinning rooms on each ward in the Main
Building. Frequent complaints can be found in hospital reports about
the poor state of the food by the time it arrived in the wards. Most
often the food would be cold by the time the patients sat down to
eat. There was a great push by the hospital trustees and
superintendent in the late 1890s to construct a larger, modern
kitchen with a dinning area.
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| As part of the Cottage Plan rebuild a new kitchen was finished and subsequently opened in September 1903. The new kitchen continued to prepare food for all the patients and staff at the hospital. Incoming materials were stored in the cold storage building, which completed in 1904 adjacent to the kitchen. The kitchen featured many modern amenities of the time, including an electric system of elevators which made moving materials quick and easy. The new kitchen also featured a dining area for patients that were able to leave their ward. For those patients unable to use the new kitchen a series to tunnels connected it with the rest of the complex. Once the food was prepared it was transported on carts through the tunnels to dinning rooms in the ward buildings. A report in 1904 listed the large amount of food that was used at the hospital. Some of the items on the list included 173,793 pounds of beef, 29,109 pounds of butter, 12,162 dozen eggs, 17,159 pounds of ham, 51 barrels of salt fish, 9,025 pounds of coffee, 1,699 barrels of flour, and 205 gallons of oysters. A lesser amount of clams, crabs, and lobster were also used that year, but were most likely only served to the staff. In 1937 a massive addition was built onto the kitchen, this new addition became known as the Central Kitchen. After which the original kitchen was converted into what would be called the Canteen. The Canteen offered an alternative menu to the Central Kitchen however, where as the Central Kitchen provided meals for no charge, patients and staff were required to pay for any items they wanted from the Canteen. As of summer 2010 the original kitchen building still looks much as it did then patients last used it in 2006. The food preparation equipment is still there as well as the serving areas, soda machines, and many tables and chairs. | ||||||||||||
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Vintage Photos
Contemporary Photos
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| An addition was made to the new kitchen in 1903-1904. This new building was known as the Cold Storage Building and it housed a butcher shop, storeroom, and a bakery. With the advancements in electric refrigeration it was no longer necessary to harvest and store large blocks of ice for the purpose of keeping perishable foods cold. The cold storage room had space for twenty beef carcasses. An early version of a walk-in refrigerator was used for storing vegetables, milk, and butter. With the completion of this building the Ice House was subsequently abandoned. | ||||||||||||
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Vintage Photos
Contemporary Photos
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| In 1937 a new building vastly increased the size of the original kitchen complex. This new addition included a large modern food preparation area, numerous walk-in freezers on both the main floor and in the basement, and a large dining area. A new unloading dock allowed easy unloading of the new larger trucks of the time period, a chute allowed goods to quickly slide down to the basement where they were kept in storage until needed by the kitchen staff. An elevator system made for easy transport of goods from the basement back up to the main floor. Patients were not charged for meals severed in the Central Kitchen. After the hospital closed in 2006 much of the food preparation equipment were auctioned off and over the years that followed the building was stripped further of much of it's interior leaving it not much more than a shell of a building. | ||||||||||||
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Vintage Photos
Contemporary Photos
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