Brooklyn History -- Fireplaces
Photo via pacacc.org

Read Part 2 of this story.

Most people love fireplaces. Perhaps it’s the primal quality of fire, or the novelty of a heating source of choice rather than necessity. Fires are romantic, nostalgic and memory invoking.

When our homes in Brooklyn were first being built, back in the 1600’s, there was no nostalgia. A fireplace was a necessity for heat and cooking.

Early hearths were large to accommodate a variety of cooking jobs, as well as to provide heat for the main room of the house. Federal and Georgian homes often have very formal paneled walls with a large fireplace in the middle.

There was no mantle shelf, but paneled insets perfect for paintings. Pediments often crowned the wall, framing the fireplace.

By the time the 1830’s rolled around, and our earliest neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn Heights were being settled, the fireplace and mantel had simplified into a frame with a mantelshelf, a frieze panel below it, and pilaster trim or colonettes, which are small slender columns, to the side.

Brooklyn History -- Fireplaces
Photo via kehrs.org

Trim was used for the first time, and could be classic egg and dart molding, or carved swags, sunbursts, or garlands. The mantels were usually pine and were painted. It was also popular to faux paint them to resemble better wood, or marble.

Brooklyn History -- Fireplaces
Wylie House. Photo via Flickr

The Greek Revival, Italianate, and some Neo-Grec row houses began to forgo wood for marble. White marble was the most popular, and the richer the house, the more ornate the carving and the larger the fireplace.

The parlors in Greek Revival houses often had large black marble mantlepieces with prominent veins of white or gold, with relatively simple lines, and large pilasters, although white was very popular as well.

Gothic Revival homes tended to have white marble mantles with simple lines in order to accommodate Gothic trefoils, quadrefoils and other ornamentation.

Brooklyn History -- Fireplaces
Photo via Brownstoner archives

The iron inserts were also decorated with Gothic imagery and shapes. In both styles, lesser rooms could have white/grey marble, slate, or wood.

By the late 1850’s and the dawn of the Civil War, central heating was par for the course in the Italianate and Second Empire home. The fireplace was beginning to be seen more as a focal point of a room, from a decorative sense, rather than the source of heat.

Wood and coal furnaces in the cellar could now deliver hot air through ducts and vents throughout the house, sometimes through the vent in the fireplace itself.

Some fireplaces were still functional, but by this period, coal was the preferred fuel, and a coal firebox was considerably smaller and narrower than a wood box.

Marble was the material of choice, and this is the period of the classic brownstone white marble fireplace with the scalloped mantelshelf, decorative keystone, and arched opening with its iron firebox and screen.

The most expensive homes had pure white marble mantels, often with elaborately carved figures called caryatids, woman’s figures carrying the mantel shelf on their heads.

The rest of the mantel could be carved with floral decoration, and perhaps an exquisitely carved bust for the keystone. Less expensive mantels were made of a lower grade white marble with a lot of grey in it, and duller than higher grade marble, and sometimes other colors of marble, such as black, pink or green would be used, sometimes as a decorative insert.

Brooklyn History -- Fireplaces
Photo via nor’eastsalvage.com

Upper floors, or more humble homes might also have slate mantels faux painted to look like marble. Slate was very easy to cut and carve, and cost much less.

Wood mantels fauxed to look like marble were also popular at this time. Often the paint jobs were so good, one couldn’t tell it wasn’t marble.

Regardless of the material, most of the mantelpieces of this time were made in pieces and assembled on site, with screws holding together the various elements, and then holding the mantel to the wall.

Very few of the marble surrounds were one piece of marble, as the cost for that would be astronomical.

Factories had advanced by this time to the point that each component of the mantelpiece was cut from the larger marble slab by machine and shaped and polished by machine, with only the keystone and fancier decorative elements polished by hand.

A marble mantel piece could then be affordable in every major room in the house. Another important decorative element in the fireplace, which takes place at this time is the appearance of the large over mantel mirror.

A separate element from the fireplace, these mirrors were usually gilded or painted gold, and could be oversized to take up three or four feet of space above the mantel, or continue to the ceiling, with an ornate frame.

My first home in Brooklyn, a small 1870’s Neo-Grec, in Bed Stuy, had marble mantelpieces. I had 5 fireplaces in the house.

They all had 8 layers of paint on them. Even though I was renting, I couldn’t stand the painted fireplaces, and spent a lot of time stripping the mantelpieces.

Brooklyn History -- Fireplaces
Photo via casaCARA.com

The ground floor had a very grey/white marble mantelpiece, without much decorative carving. My forced air heat came up through the fireplace, so the iron grate in the center had louvers to adjust the openings, as did all of the fireplaces.

The two fireplaces on the bedroom floor were also the same greyish/white marble, but the two on the parlor floor were a better grade of white marble, and both had reddish/rose colored marble inserts on the side pilasters.

They were all beautiful, and worth every minute to strip, even though I was only renting. The many previous owners had painted over both the marble and the iron grate.

After stripping the marble with chemical stripper, plastic scrapers, toothbrushes and dental tools, I ended up making a poultice of bleach and baking soda to leech out the last of the brown paint residue from the very porous marble. Please don’t EVER paint marble fireplaces.

Next time: Neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, Arts and Crafts and the Colonial Revival. The fireplace goes through some big changes.


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Thanks as ever, MM. Our house in Prospect Heights sounds similar to your old place. We have 6 slate fireplaces, all with their original grates. We had confirmation that the original heating system was forced hot air when we opened 3 of the chimney breasts (we ran the duct from our boiler through one line and converted two others to wood burning, constructing new terracotta flues). There wasn’t a speck of creosote or soot in any of the flues. Clearly they had never been used for burning wood or coal. We also still had the original faux marble paint finish on several of the mantles. But it was very badly deteriorated so we reluctantly had them stripped. Ultimately I don’t regret it because now we can enjoy both the patterns etched in the slate (which are surprisingly modern — almost deco in feel) and also the lovely blue-green tones of the stone itself.

  2. Fascinating topic. Wasder, where was the works hidden exactly? What was it, a syringe and a rubber thing? How old?

    We found two bullets while skim coating. One was in a wall, one in a pocket door. (Thus answering the question of how the bullet hole in the window got there.)

    Someone from this site told me they had stripped a slate fireplace down to the original faux enamel with a razor blade. I guess they didn’t use any chemical. I wasn’t totally clear on the technique.

  3. cyrk, yes, you can strip the paint w/out removing the faux finish if you’re careful. The best way is with heat. When the paint layers soften and blister they can be removed with a plastic scraper. another approach is to use the “peel-away” system where paper panels stick to the outer layer and peel it away. Water-based stripper is best for this. Assume the paint you remove is full of lead and take the approp. precautions.