The Kitchen Quarter

Around 1840, this rare original slave quarter was built of milled lumber and cut nails to house two enslaved families, with a workroom and an overhead loft for storage or sleeping. The Banks House quarter had a weather-proof shingle roof, a tight plank floor, and an elevated structure that improved ventilation and made cleaning underneath easier, while two windows in each apartment provided air and light. Although the standard of slave housing increased considerably during the nineteenth century, masters usually reserved well-built frame quarters for higher-status enslaved people such as domestics and artisans. A large cooking hearth in the western room and the quarter's proximity to the Banks House show that it also served as the plantation kitchen. After the Civil War, part of the partition between the two apartments was removed so the building could be used by a single family, and its sparse furnishings reflect the lifestyle of African-American tenant farmers in the years immediately following the Civil War.

Virginia · United States