Vigo County Historical Society

Fireplaces provided function, artistic beauty

When the Vigo County Historical Museum was built as a private home in 1865 by William H. Sage, one of the main features was the fireplace--not the wide-open, log-burning hearth of pioneer days, but the elegant coal-burning heating system.

Still, 90 percent of the heat went up the chimney. You could stand in front of the heat and be toasty warm while your backside would be cold.

I counted seven fireplaces in the museum, all attached to huge chimneys. There is a very special fireplace of white Italian marble. It comes complete with white marble mantle and an unblemished white marble hearth and is located in the Bindley Pharmacy.

The other fireplaces are painted black with gold streaks running throughout the black to simulate marble. Each fireplace has a heavy metal grating or cover to aid in keeping the red-hot embers or ash from coming out onto the floor. This also helped to keep little girls’ dresses from catching on fire if they came too close to an open fire.

The simulated marble fireplaces each have a hearth in front, which averages a foot long and about a foot and a half in width. This was made of variegated mosaic tiles and painstakingly put together. The hearths protected the surrounding floors from hot ashes.

Think of the fun that children would have on Christmas morning as they raced to the fireplace mantle in expectation of a filled stocking. They would also have had to put out a shoe on the hearth Christmas Eve, as sometimes it was said, a lump of coal would be left for a child that hadn’t minded his parents the previous year.

Except for Christmas day, all mantles held bric-a-brac, which was a way to show off favorite possessions. A house this big required servants and one important job was to keep the fireplace going, filled with coal, ashes removed every day. Also, once a year a chimney sweep would be called in to remove soot from the chimneys.

These lovely works of functional and artistic beauty in the museum are even lovelier during the holidays when each is decorated for the Christmas season.