Salvage This! Neat Old Victorian Fireplace
The coolest item at The Flea this weekend was without a doubt this old iron fireplace that Clinton Hill resident and regular vendor David Sokosh had for sale over near the backstop. (He ended up selling it for $50.) While the exterior frame is instantly recognizable as the semi-circular edge of a fireplace, the guts…
The coolest item at The Flea this weekend was without a doubt this old iron fireplace that Clinton Hill resident and regular vendor David Sokosh had for sale over near the backstop. (He ended up selling it for $50.) While the exterior frame is instantly recognizable as the semi-circular edge of a fireplace, the guts of this piece are less familiar. Turns out it’s an apparatus for burning coal. Pretty neat. Anyone have one of these still installed in a fireplace at home?
I have something similar sitting in my garage in Beacon. It came out of an old farmhouse around the corner. We plan to sandblast it and install it just for show (in the Beacon house). But it’s been sitting in my garage for at least 3 years now. One of the many projects…….
Ooooh, Brenda! I’ve always been quite fond of you, but now that I know you’re a Dr Who fan it’s gonna be LOVE!
Contrary to most renovators beliefs, few of the fireplaces in Brownstone Brooklyn were wood burners. Most homes had a coal buring fireplace and later, gas burning. The unlined flues are because of gas fired burners.
A friend had one of these in her ground floor, and she discovered that you get coal at (obsolete technology central) THE ICE BLOCK GUY! Dunno if that’s still the case but in Bed Stuy 3 or 4 years ago it was. She tried it, and although the coal burned very nicely, she found the ash or clinkers or whatever was left over was hard to clean up and she gave up on using it.
It is a Victorian-era Dalek…EXTERMINATE!
It looks like it came from a galleon
That’s exactly what most of these “inserts” look like when they are intact. I learned this when I was looking for an insert cover and finally bought one from http://www.urbanremainschicago.com All I wanted was the frontpiece so that I could install a modern gas-fired “coal” burner in the brick firebox. You can see more of these in different styles on their website.