Figure 17. Necessary, rear or west elevation. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.
The Storage House and Necessary
The building referred to by the present owners as the slave quarters does not seem to have been suitable for the housing of human beings, and may actually not have been used for that purpose. It is a one-story brick structure with a ridge roof over three rooms. Neither of the end rooms has a finished floor or ceiling nor do they appear ever to have had finished walls; the windows are wall openings protected by iron bars; each room has four brick diamond-shaped ventilators and neither seems to have been heated—in addition to being open, there are no chimneys or flues. It is likely that both rooms were used for storage spaces and, from the evidence in existing doors and windows, secure ones. The overall measurements of the building are approximately thirty-four feet eight inches by ten feet ten inches, each end room measuring approximately eleven feet eleven inches by ten feet ten inches.
The necessary, a privy or outdoor toilet, occupies the central recessed portion between the two end storage rooms. It measures approximately ten feet ten inches by five feet five inches, and includes separate men's and women's sections.
Brick in the structure has an average size of nine inches by four and one-quarter inches by two and one-quarter inches. The bond is common, varying from three courses of stretchers to one of headers at the foundations, to five to one at the gable end. Queen closers are used at the corners of the structure. The cornice line is three bricks deep, stepped outward. The bottom and top course are stretchers, while the middle course is set at an angle in a saw-tooth pattern,[55] the same cornice as is used on the house.
The structure is symmetrical. Brick ventilators, two in each gable end and two to the rear of each end section, are worked into the brick wall. They are in the shape of a flattened diamond, with sixteen headers eliminated to form the pattern.[56]