Things you'd find in a cellar in 1940 for $500, Alex.

[Rick Blaine]

Canning Kitchens

Everybody had a basement around here. Not a NICE basement but a basement with a concrete floor. Good for storage. Also often had a whole second kitchen down there so you could do all your cooking down there and keep the upstairs kitchen COMPLETELY IMMACULATE, which sounds like an exhausting way to live.

... round here these are called "canning kitchens" and are used primarily for putting up vegetables in the summer/early fall. The basement location was an effort to remain as cool as possible while home canning (which involves boiling water, lotsa steam & cooking) in the days prior to A.C.

 

[zaika]

... round here these are called "canning kitchens" and are used primarily for putting up vegetables in the summer/early fall. The basement location was an effort to remain as cool as possible while home canning (which involves boiling water, lotsa steam & cooking) in the days prior to A.C.

that is the most awesome thing i have ever heard of in my entire life.


i want one.

 

[KY Gentleman]

My grandparents cellar was full of canned goods, coal and a bunch of cats!!!!

 

[kampkatz]

My grandfather had his home-made wine making equipment in the basement.

 

[Mr. K.L.Bowers]

I can clearly remember the cellar under my parent’s first home. It had a dirt floor and was damp and smelly. There was a potato bin, shelves of can goods, and items removed from the home but not discarded, (remember these were people who grew up during the depression and you did not throw anything away).

My grandparent’s cellar was more interesting. They had a coal fired furnace, but it was not steam or a forced hot air system. There was grating in the floor of the kitchen, which was above the top of the furnace. The heat radiated from the furnace into the first floor and another grate in the ceiling of the kitchen allowed the heat to pass to the 2nd floor. Not very efficient. I remember sleeping in the “back” bedroom which was two rooms away form the heat vent and cold.

There was a small burner and tank, which they called a dinky, to heat water in warm weather. Again nothing was thrown away. My grandfather had a small workbench with tools, the coal bin, potato bin, onion bin and I remember a small caliber revolver tucked in between the beams in the ceiling.

Some of the older farm home in our area had kitchens in the cellar, but most had their summer kitchen in a small building outside. The reason was twofold, it kept the heat out of the house in the summer, and most home fires then as now started in the kitchen, so if the kitchen caught on fire, it could not spread to the rest of the house