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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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| In 1903 a new kitchen was constructed as part of the cottage plan rebuild. It prepared food for all the patients and staff at the hospital. Incoming materials were stored in the cold storage building, which was completed in 1904 behind the new kitchen. Many new amenities of the time were added to the new building, including an electric system of elevators which made moving materials quick and easy. The 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 of tunnels connected it with the rest of the complex. Prepared food would be transported on carts through the tunnels to each ward building. 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. Potatoes and bread were a staple at the hospital. Wheat, flour, and other ingredients were all grown on the hospital farm and tended to by patients, which made it inexpensive to produce. In 1937 a large addition was built onto the kitchen, after which, the building was converted into what would be known as The Canteen. The Canteen offered an alternative menu to the Central Kitchen. | ||||||||||||
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Contemporary Photos
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| The Cold Storage Building was built behind the new Central Kitchen in 1904. It housed a butcher shop, storerooms, 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. This building was later used as The Hill Store when a new Central Kitchen was built in 1937. | ||||||||||||
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| Completed in 1937, the new Central Kitchen and several other buildings constructed during this time were all constructed as part of the Works Progress Administration program. The new kitchen building included a much larger food preparation area, numerous walk-in freezers, and a large dining area with a seating capacity of 700 patients. A modern dock allowed for easy unloading of larger trucks and the basement contained several storage rooms and workshops. The second floor contained offices and classrooms. The Central Kitchen severed about four and a half tons of food daily in the 1950s. After the hospital closed in 2006, most of the food preparation equipment was either sold off or sent to other state hospitals. Over the years that followed the building was used as storage space and further stripped of much of its interior leaving it not much more than a shell of a building. | ||||||||||||
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Contemporary Photos
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