The Fireboards of Darlington House

When Darlington House was built in 1817, burning wood in fireplaces was the primary method for heating houses in this country.  Not surprisingly, there are a lot of fireplaces at Darlington--six of them inside the house, and another one in an outbuilding.  Within a decade from when the house was built, iron stoves supplanted fireplaces as the preferred source of heating in America, and all of Darlington's fireplaces were refitted with stoves.  It was not until 1931, when the Proctors bought the house, that central heating was installed.

One of Darlington's fireplaces, with fireboard

When we bought Darlington in the late 1990s, only three of its fireplaces were operable, and only one of them was safe to use.  We have since opened up and lined all six of the fireplaces' chimneys, and today all of them are in working order and up to code.  It was a monumental, lengthy, dirty, and very expensive undertaking.  But now we have the pleasure of six working fireplaces.  And we use them when the weather is cold, as can be seen here, here, and here.

One of Darlington's chimneys, open and awaiting
its new clay tile lining and damper, circa 2003

While a fireplace is attractive when a fire is burning within it, or dressed with logs when one is not, it is not so fair when it is empty.  During the winter we lay logs in the fireplaces when they are not in use, to be ready for the next time we light a fire, but during warmer weather we leave our fireplaces empty and swept clean of ashes.

But our bare hearths and empty andirons looked rather forlorn during the summer months, so I thought it would be a good idea to cover them during the off-season with fireboards, as was customary when Darlington House was built.  The question was, what kind?

This antique American fireboard sold at auction for $82,250
Image courtesy of Skinner Auctions

I wasn't of the mind to have ones made and painted with naive scenes of country villages or hunters on horseback.  While I like living in an antique house, furnished sympathetically, I don't aspire to living in a folk-art collection or a house museum, which is what such fireboards bring to mind, at least to me.  Furthermore, modern-day painted fireboards done in a naive, folk-art manner can very quickly devolve into the realm of country cute.  Far better to have one's fireboards painted in the more modern, albeit classic, manner of Graham Rust, the very talented English artist:

A Graham Rust rendering of a painted chimney board
Image from The Painted House, by Graham Rust

But such talent is not easy to come by, and is very dear, and, besides, Reggie wasn't keen on introducing too much of a statement into the rooms at Darlington House.  It's one thing to cover one's upholstered furniture with smart summer slipcovers, as we do during the summer months, but it is another matter to also introduce a different painted scene into each room's fireplace opening.

But Reggie does admit that he wouldn't have minded having at least one fireboard covered with antique scenic wallpaper, which was a popular decorative conceit in the early nineteenth century.  But antique wallpaper-covered fireboards are difficult to find, and maddeningly expensive when found.  And then there's the pesky issue of finding ones that actually fit one's fireboxes.

A fire surround with scenic wallpaper fireboard
Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art
Image from Classical Taste in America, 1800-1840, by Wendy A. Cooper

In the early nineteenth century, many of the papers used to cover fireboards in America were printed in France, and the panels were specifically made to use either on fireboards or as overdoor panels.

Antique wallpaper panel of Amphitrite born across the waves
Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York
Image from Wallpaper in America, by Catherine Lynn

The estimable Adelphi Paper Hangings recently introduced two wallpaper panels in a document pattern, Cupid and Psyche, circa 1795-1810, that may be used for papering fireboards.  However, that falls short of our needs, as we have six fireplaces at Darlington, not two, that beg for fireboards.

Adelphi's Cupid and Psyche wallpaper panel
Image courtesy of Adelphi Paper Hangings

Considering the number of fireplaces at Darlington, I reasoned it was best to wait until the perfect fireboard solution appeared, rather than rush into an unsatisfactory and costly custom fireboard project.

So the fireplaces of Darlington House sat empty during the warm-weather months for the better part of ten years, with narry a fireboard within them.  But Reggie was not exactly inconsolable in his grief, as there were other, more pressing claims on his resources at Darlington House, the list of which was so long as to defy imagination.

Our early fireboards

Several years ago, while visiting the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair, in Rhinebeck, New York, I came across two Federal-era, louvered shutter fireboards.  Made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when Darlington House was built, the fireboards were in their original green-paint finish.  It took me all of ten seconds to cry "Sold!"  I was thrilled, when we brought them home, to find that they required only minimal adjustments to fit two of our fireplaces.

One of our early-19th-century fireboards
in Darlington's original kitchen fireplace

But what to do about the other, empty fireplaces?

After much deliberation, research, and discussion, I decided that the best solution was to have the same type of louvered shutter fireboards made as we bought at the antiques fair.  That way, the fireboards of Darlington House would be consistent throughout the house and not call too much attention to themselves, yet still provide a pleasing architectural and decorative addition to the rooms during the warm weather months.

Three new fireboards, awaiting notching and painting

This past winter, during active fireplace season, I arranged with our architectural historian, Isaiah Cornini, to have three new louvered shutter fireboards made.  Isaiah used the shutters that hang on our exterior windows as the template for the new fireboards.

One of our early fireboards required some patching and extending to fit its designated fireplace more snuggly.

The extended and patched early fireboard

Once the panel was patched, Isaiah had a decorative painter inpaint the extensions on the fireboard to match the original paint.  We decided to paint all of the new fireboards the same grassy green that we used on the exterior shutters on Darlington.

The new fireboards have been notched for andirons
and have received their first coat of paint

I am quite pleased with the way the new fireboards came out and with how handsome they look in our rooms.  Here is one of them installed in our drawing room's fireplace.  I think it looks marvelous.

If you live in such a house as Darlington, or in any house or apartment with fireplaces, for that matter, I encourage you to have fireboards made for use during warm weather.  Not only do fireboards cover the fireplaces' unsightly empty openings when not in use, but they mark a pleasing seasonal change to one's interiors, particularly when done in concert with the covering of one's upholstered furniture with summer slipcovers, as we do at Darlington.

Tell me, how do you dress your fireplaces during the summer?

All photographs, except where noted, by Reggie Darling and Boy Fenwick

Blinded, Shuttered, and Green

Darlington House was built in the early 19th century before the advent of electric lighting, HVAC systems, indoor plumbing, screens or storm windows, and assorted other modern conveniences that today most of us take for granted.  The house had no such conveniences for more than a century until they were first installed in 1931, when the Proctors bought it.  One of the pleasures we have had as owners (stewards, really) of the house has been learning how its occupants lived before there were such conveniences.  We have studied how they kept warm during the winter and cool in the summer, lighted their rooms, bathed, laundered, and made it all work.  It has been fascinating to understand how people of the early 19th century coped with their domestic challenges and to comprehend the genius with which they did so, considering the obstacles they faced.

Broadway, New York City

Watercolor attributed to Nicolino Calyo, 1840-1844

Museum of the City of New York

One of the best sources I know for learning about how people in pre-industrial America faced domestic life is the absorbing, well-written, and profusely illustrated book At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 by Elizabeth Donaghy Garrett.  I have spent many hours pouring over its 304 information-packed pages, and I encourage anyone who is interested in American domestic material culture to add it to their library.  Reading At Home helps put in perspective how fortunate we are to live in today's world of today's conveniences, no longer hostage to the time- and effort-consuming tasks of our forebears.

One of the things that repeatedly strikes me about how pre-industrial Americans coped with their day-to-day lives is that many of their solutions fit squarely within today's definition of living "green."  They, of course, had miniscule carbon footprints compared with ours today, despite the fact that they burned wood, and later coal, as their primary fuel.  They disposed of nothing unless it was irreparably broken or worn out, re-using and re-purposing as much as possible.  They were thrifty, which was considered a virtue.  But what really impresses me is the cleverness with which they maximized the efficiency of the solutions to their domestic challenges.

South Parlor of Abraham Russell, New Bedford, Massachusetts

Watercolor by Joseph Shoemaker Russell, 1848

Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford

It was not until I came to inhabit Darlington that I fully appreciated the ingenuity and versatility of venetian blinds and exterior shutters.  I had lived with venetian blinds over the years, and liked them, but it was only after we installed them in our dining room at Darlington that I came to comprehend what a technological marvel they must have been when introduced (and that they remain today).  I always appreciated that exterior shutters added to the visual attractiveness of many houses, but I did not at all understand that they are, in fact, a superb solution to the problems of light control, security, and ventilation when used for their original purpose (and when they are operable, as opposed to screw-on).

View from the House of Henry Briscoe Thomas

Unknown artist, c. 1841

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

While the windows in Darlington's dining room did not have blinds when we bought the house, it was clear that the window surrounds in the room were built to accommodate venetian blinds, a view confirmed by the architectural historian whom we have worked with since we began restoring the house.  We reinstated blinds in the dining room's windows, and ordered historically accurate, period-appropriate wooden ones from Devenco http://www.devenco.net/, a firm that specializes in custom-made blinds (plus interior and exterior shutters) for historic buildings.  They work perfectly, are handsome, and are pleasing to use.

Mrs. A. W. Smith's Parlor, Broad and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia

Watercolor by Joseph Shoemaker Russell, 1853

Private collection

Darlington was built with exterior, operable slatted shutters at its windows (known in the era as "Venetian" shutters), which were remarkably still hanging when we bought the house, almost 180 years after it was built.  However, the shutters were decaying and degraded, and we had to replace them.  We had them reproduced, line for line, and had them re-hung with the original wrought-iron hardware that I removed from the original shutters and reconditioned (a job that took me the better part of one winter's weekends to complete).  The "new-old" shutters operate smoothly, and we use them as they were originally intended: to regulate light and for security.  We love the way they look, and we appreciate them for being such efficient and elegant pieces of machinery.  They are painted, as are the interior blinds in the dining room, in a handsome grass-green color taken from period paintings of buildings built in America in the early part of the 19th-century.  Boy developed the color and had it custom-mixed in Benjamin Moore paint.

Here's what Ms. Garrett writes in At Home about shutters:

"First advertised in American newspapers in the mid-1700s, slatted shutters had become universal by the mid-1800s, for they protected household furnishings from the effect of sunlight; they discouraged the free entry of flies and mosquitoes; they screened out the dust and sand that blew about the streets; they enhanced privacy; and they promoted summer comfort."

We use our shutters at Darlington House.  During the summer we often close them for days at a time, both to reduce our energy consumption and also because the light that comes through the slats is wonderfully pleasant; I'm convinced that the rooms even appear cooler.  During storms we often close all of the shutters on the house to protect the windows from blowing debris, and we also close them when we are away for weeks at a time.  I love the way the house looks with all of its shutters closed, the place all battened down.  It is curious how many comments we get from neighbors (and strangers, for that matter), as many of them have never seen a house whose shutters are used as they were intended.

Reggie closing a shutter at Darlington House

Moving inside the house, into the dining room, here is a photo montage of a number of the arrangements available when windows are dressed with venetian blinds and exterior shutters:

Venetian blinds are a highly efficient means of controlling light and privacy in one's rooms.  Just as we use our shutters, we also use our blinds to regulate light in our dining room, and also for effect.  Unlike roller blinds, they allow one to see out the window when drawn, so it is possible to have full privacy but still have a sense of the outdoors.  There are many options for how one configures the blinds, depending on how much privacy or light is desired.  And on top of that, they are exceedingly handsome, neat, and plain.


Watercolors and drawings from At Home: The American Family 1750-1870, by Elizabeth Donaghy Garrett, Henry N. Abrams publisher 1990;
All photographs by Boy Fenwick