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1938 hurricane

In Search of the Roosevelt Outhouse in New England

During the Great Depression, the U.S. government built 2.3 million outhouses in rural America. They earned several nicknames, including the Roosevelt Outhouse, the Roosevelt Room, the White House, the Relief Office or simply the Eleanor. Some people excused themselves by saying they had to visit Miss Perkins, meaning Frances Perkins, FDR’s secretary of Labor.

The sanitary toilet program aimed to combat hookworm, typhoid fever, diarrhea and dysentery, especially prevalent in the rural South. A survey of 700 counties in 11 southern states found the presence of hookworm in every one of them. Soil pollution was the leading cause of hookworm, and unsanitary outhouses were a leading cause of soil pollution.

Educators and government officials from 1900 on tried to improve farm sanitation by promoting better privies. “Nothing is more important to the farmer than good health. Good health cannot be preserved if the sanitary conditions of the farm are bad,” wrote Agriculture Secretary James Wilson in 1911 in the introduction to the USDA Farmers Bulletin 463 – The Sanitary Privy.

An image that appeared in a number of government publications.

Then in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered 1 million sanitary privies built. In the end, the WPA and other agencies more than doubled that number to 2,309,239. Today, people who own a Roosevelt Outhouse proudly describe their iconic outbuilding to local reporters or on real estate listings. But they’re mostly in the South and the Midwest. Which raises the question: Did anyone build a Roosevelt Outhouse in New England?

Yes they did.

Evolution of the Roosevelt Outhouse

In 1909, the Rockefeller Foundation made public health a priority, and undertook a hookworm study from 1909 to 1915. It found that unsanitary privies caused hookworm infections, which led to diarrhea, stomach ache and anemia. The study concluded that outhouse pits had to be at least six feet deep to prevent hookworms from making contact with humans.

The U.S. Public Health Service began to work with state governments to distribute plans for sanitary privies during World War I and the 1920s. Then the country fell into the Great Depression, and few people could afford to build a new outhouse.

The Civil Works Administration formed in 1933 as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, and began building sanitary outhouses. Property owners supplied the wood and other materials, while the CWA provided the labor. However, the agency discovered wooden floors were hard to clean and rotted quickly.

The Works Progress Administration picked up the privy project with an improved design. It had a concrete vault below ground, which served as the foundation for the structure. The pot had a square hole and a wooden seat with a lid that closed so tight flies couldn’t get in. The concrete vault also had a ventilation shaft with screens to keep out flies.

Families had a choice of a one-holer or a two-holer. The two-holer had a smaller seat for children who might otherwise fall in.

A concrete outhouse base. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

The concrete and lids were mass produced in central locations. WPA employees then went to work building Roosevelt Outhouses for homes, schools, dairies, filling stations and tourist camps.

Sanitary pre-cast concrete bases or the Roosevelt Outhouse after stripping of forms, Image courtesy Library of Congress.

How To Build a Roosevelt Outhouse

It took three-man WPA teams 20 hours, or three days, to build one. The labor was again free, but a family had to pay for the materials if it could afford it. For $17, a farm family could buy the materials for an outhouse.

Loading completed privy houses on truck for delivery to site in 1938. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The sanitary toilet project was one of the few that built a structure on private property. The WPA justified the private improvements as necessary for public health. The Roosevelt Outhouses did reduce the incidence of hookworm.

Where To Find a Roosevelt Outhouse

Roosevelt Outhouses still stand in places throughout the county.

Beckley, W. Va., has an exhibition coal mine that features a Roosevelt Outhouse. The concrete base has “1939” and “WPA” written in the concrete.
The Case-Barlow Farm in Hudson, Ohio, has an outhouse with a concrete base, probably a Roosevelt Outhouse.
In Atchison County, Kans., a couple enjoys owning an Eleanor outhouse, according to Capper’s Farmer.

Fitting vent stack and seat cover to sanitary base of privy. Courtesy Library of Congress.

A real estate listing for a 150-year-old farmhouse in Indianapolis boasts of charm, woodwork, soaring ceilings and “a Roosevelt Outhouse!”

New England certainly had its share of outhouses. The 1940 Census showed 29 percent of homes in Vermont and 25 percent in New Hampshire did not have flush toilets.

So where might one find a Roosevelt Outhouse in New England?

Probably in Albany, N.H., at the Blackberry Crossing Campground. According to the Living New Deal website,

Blackberry Crossing is unique in that it was a CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) Camp during the 1930’s. There is a self-guided tour of the old camp within the campground. The campground has 26 sites that are available on a first come, first served basis. There are hand pumps for water and vault toilets. A short walk from the campground is the Albany Covered Bridge, The Nanamocomuck Ski Trail, and the Boulder Loop hiking trail.

“Vault toilet” is another name for a Roosevelt Outhouse.

Some Historic Outhouses

In the search for a Roosevelt Outhouse, we came across several other historic privies.

The outhouse behind the Silas Deane house. Photo courtesy the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.

Connecticut has several in Wethersfield at The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum, which features a fancy six-holer outhouse where George Washington may have sat.

The 1938 New England Hurricane upended the outhouse at the Israel Putnam farm, and no one seems to have restored it. The National Register of Historic Places nomination form for the farm makes no mention of an outhouse. The Putnam Cottage (or Knapp Tavern) in Greenwich, however, does have a reproduction privy.

Israel Putnam’s privy after the 1938 hurricane

In Boston, archaeologists dug up an outhouse that Paul Revere may have used.

This story was updated in 2023.

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How the Quahog Became a Rhode Island Icon

If you know anything about Rhode Island, you know the quahog is sacred and peculiar to America’s smallest and wateriest state.

But it wasn’t always so.

Another mollusk harvested from Narragansett Bay dominated Rhode Island cuisine for centuries. We know that because Roger Williams in 1643 described the Narragansett Indians fishing for oysters.

But World War II, pollution and hurricanes wiped out the Narragansett Bay oyster industry.

The quahog then took center stage.

The Oyster

Oystering in Narragansett Bay, like most fisheries, went through a series of ups and downs over the years.

In 1700, oyster fishermen harvested the mollusks – but for their shells, to make lime. The Rhode Island legislature banned the practice in 1734 as a waste of good oyster meat.

More oyster regulations followed as circumstances dictated.

In 1766, the legislature tried to prevent overfishing by requiring oysters to be harvested with tongs. Three decades later, the state started closing oyster beds for the same reason.

Then during the 19th century, the General Assembly passed legislation to encourage oyster fishing and aquaculture.

But by 1896, the oyster beds started to diminish because of industrial pollution. The Providence Gas Co. got itself sued in 1905 for polluting the Narragansett Bay.

Boats dredging for oysters, around 1875. The vessel tows the dredge along the bottom of the sea collecting the bottom-dwelling oysters.

The Great Hurricane of 1938

Oyster harvesters had a banner year in 1911, landing 1.4 million bushels of oysters. But things went downhill from there, as pollution continued to harm the oyster beds. Then in 1938 came the Great New England hurricane, which pretty much wiped out the oyster industry.

The devastating hurricane of 1938 dealt a near-fatal blow to Narragansett Bay’s oyster industry. It wiped out shucking houses, shipping wharves and oyster boats. Then World War II came along, depriving the remaining oyster companies of strong backs and willing hands to harvest oysters.

Fortunately for Rhode Island stomachs, the quahog stepped in. Literally. A quahog moves through the mud with a muscular little foot.

Enter the Quahog

A quahog (pronounced KO-hog) is a large, hard-shelled clam.. ‘Quahog’ comes from the Narragansett word, ‘poquauhock.’ The Narragansett people had used their shells for wampum. New Englanders are really the only ones who call them quahogs. Others call them chowder clams.

Though quahogs are native to the Atlantic coast from Prince Edward Island to the Yucatan, they are most abundant from Cape Cod to New Jersey. You’ll find Rhode Island smack in the center of quahog country.

Population growth along Narragansett Bay has actually helped the quahog population. Quahogs feed on plankton, and plankton feeds on nitrates, which water treatment plants can’t filter out. One of the nice things about quahogs (in addition to their flavor) is that they filter impurities out of the water.

Quahogs burrow into mud in the intertidal zone and below the tidewaters. Digging them requires a strong back and a stronger work ethic.

Nelson Blount

Nelson Blount claimed credit for making the quahog a Rhode Island staple after the 1938 hurricane, one of the deadliest and most destructive ever to strike New England. His family had an oyster-harvesting-and-shucking business in Barrington, R.I., since the 1880s. It didn’t take much for Blount to realize the storm had wiped out his family business, unless he could find another shellfish to sell.

F. Nelson Blount in the cab of Rahway Valley Railroad #15 at North Walpole, New Hampshire, 1963.

So Blount began to sell the Narragansett Bay quahog as a tasty alternative to the oyster. Formally known as F. Nelson Blount, he was a terrific salesman. His sales pitch worked.

Rhode Island embraced the hard-shelled bivalve. It made its way into important Rhode Island dishes like stuffies (stuffed clams), clams casino (a version of stuffies) and the controversial tomato-based clam chowder.

Blount did well, too, growing his company into the Blount Seafood Corporation, which sold the clams that went into Campbell’s Soup clam chowder.

By 1987, Rhode Island’s Legislature declared the quahog the Rhode Island State Shell.

Devotees of popular culture will recognize the quahog from the adult cartoon series, Family Guy. The protagonist (you can’t really call him a star) lives in Quahog, R.I., a fictional town modeled on Cranston, R.I.

This story was updated in 2023. Images: Nelson Blount By RickKfoury – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.hp?curid=105312758.

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Six Historic Apple Orchards You Can Visit

Trying to pick six historic apple orchards in New England may be a fool’s errand. As Maine apple expert John Bunker explains, the notion of a commercial orchard is relatively modern.

“At a certain point, everyone had an orchard,” Bunker told the New England Historical Society. “Everyone lived on a farm, and every farm had an orchard.”

In the 1920s, a New Hampshire farmer came up with the idea of bringing tourists from Boston to pick their own apples in the fresh air and sunshine. The idea took hold. Today, 200-year-old farms are weathering developers (if not the weather) by diversifying with farm-to-table meals, cider, kids’ play areas, ready-to-eat food, hayrides, sleigh rides, corn mazes and even seasoned firewood.

Agritourism today is just as much a feature of the New England landscape as history tourism. Here, then, are six historic apple orchards, one in each New England state.

Lyman Orchards, Middlefield

Lyman Orchards can trace its roots back more than 275 years to John and Hope Lyman, who bought 37 acres of land in 1741 to establish their farm. Today the huge farm covers more than 1,000 acres, with a big history to match.

In 1830 the farm was headed by William Lyman, who became a leader in the abolitionist movement and a supporter of the Underground Railroad. The original 1785 Lyman homestead still stands on the property (though it’s been moved – pulled to its present location by oxen). The family tree sprouted a host of entrepreneurs who helped incorporate the town and build railroads, washing machines and gun sights.

The farm itself took on many flavors over the years, producing peaches, lambs, cattle and even supporting a golf course. Today it’s one of the most popular family attractions in Connecticut.

Lyman Orchards is located at 3 Lyman Rd., Middlefield, Conn.

Jonathan Fisher House, Blue Hill

Parson Jonathan Fisher was the first Congregationalist minister in Blue Hill, Maine, serving from 1794 to 1837. He was also a jack of all trades, a scientist who farmed, surveyed, wrote, bound his own books, made buttons and hats, built furniture, painted sleighs, reported for the local newspaper and helped found Bangor Theological Seminary.

Today his homestead is a house museum on the National Register of Historic Places. Around 2010, Leslie Cummins and Tim Seabrook of 5 Star Nursery in nearby Brooklin replanted his orchard around a 200-year-old pear tree still standing. They planted three trees he wrote about in his journals: Ribston Pippin, Golden Russet, and Roxbury Russet. The heritage orchard includes a group of apple trees that existed in New England before 1800, including the Rhode Island Greening.

The Jonathan Fisher House is at 44 Mines Rd., Blue Hill, Maine.

Lookout Farm, Natick

In 1650, Natick, Mass., was founded by Puritan missionary John Eliot and a small group of settlers who paddled down the Charles River in canoes. The settlers established a farm on the banks of the river in 1651. They planted beans, turnips, strawberries, grapes – and of course grew apples. In 1761, Capt. David Morse bought the farm, and he and his family lived and worked there for nearly 75 years. It got the name Lookout Farm in 1894, when Charles Whittemore and his brothers took over.

After a series of owners worked the farm, Joan and Steve Belkin bought it in 2005.

Today the farm comprises 180 acres with 60,000 fruit trees, a pick-your-own fruit business and a hard cider taproom. The Belkins also sell holiday pies and seasoned firewood.

They grow 11 varieties of apples, Asian pears, pumpkins, peaches, plums, strawberries and nectarines.

Lookout Farm is at 89 South Pleasant Street, South Natick, Mass.

Applecrest Farms, Hampton Falls

In the late 19th century, the railroad came to New Hampshire’s seacoast. It let farmers ship milk, apples, potatoes and lumber to Boston. A Hampton Falls farmer had another idea. He brought tourists once a week from Boston via an ‘Apple Train’ – one that stopped near his farm – so they could pick their own apples.

It was a novel idea back in the 1920s, but it worked. Four generations of the Wagner family have farmed the land, and today, Applecrest claims to be the oldest continually operated apple orchard in America. At the very least, it’s probably one of the oldest agritourist destinations.

Today, as many as 15,000 people visit Applecrest Farms on an autumn Sunday. There’s a 200-year-old barn on the 225-acre farm and buildings that date to the 18^th century. The farm offers pick-your-own apples, hayrides in season, apple cider and farm-to-table dining at its Farm Bistro. Their Idared apple dates to 1942, developed in Idaho as a cross between the Jonathan and Wagener.

Applecrest Farms is at 133 Exeter Rd. (Rte. 88), Hampton Falls, N.H.

Steere Orchard, Smithfield

Historic Smithfield, R.I., once had so many orchards it was known as ‘Apple Valley.’ Apple growing reached its peak in Smithfield during the 1930s, but the Great Hurricane of 1938 wiped out many trees. Real estate developers wiped out many of the orchards that the hurricane missed.

Steere Orchards in the Smithfield village of Greenville is Rhode Island’s largest orchard. According to its website, Arthur W. Steere with his son, Henry J. Steere, started the orchard around 1930. Arthur’s grandson John and great-grandson Jim now run the family apple business.

You can pick your own apples at the Steere Orchards, which offers 12 varieties: including Macoun, Honeycrisp, Gala, Cortland, Red and Golden Delicious, Macintosh and the famous Rhode Island Greening. The Greening was said to grow in only two places: heaven and Rhode Island.

They’re at 150 Austin Ave, Greenville, R.I.

Apple Barn, Woodford

Edward Hamlin Everett established Southern Vermont Orchards in 1910. He made millions in the glass business. Then he built a baronial mansion in his hometown of Bennington, and planted 75,000 apple trees, 3,000 plum trees and 2,000 quince trees. The orchards covered 10 miles. He planted 65 varieties of apples, cherries, quince, pears and plums. It was said to be the largest privately owned orchard in the world.

Everett died in 1929. He left most of his estate to his second wife and shortchanged his three daughters by his first wife, or so they thought. The daughters challenged the will after he died, and during the trial one of his daughters stayed at the family mansion. (He also had a house in Washington that is now the Turkish Ambassador’s residence.)

They’re at 150 Austin Ave., Greenville, R.I.

One night she heard weeping coming from her father’s study. She went to the room and found her mother lying on the floor, clearly a murder victim. At least that’s the story.

Bramley seedling apple

Today, Southern Vermont Orchards operates over 300 acres of orchard remaining from Everett’s original spread. Among the varieties they grow are Northern Spy, which originated in upstate New York in 1800; the 17^th-century Gravenstein; and the Paula Red, discovered in Michigan in 1960. The orchard’s Apple Barn offers beer, wine and cider tastings. They’re at 604 US Rt 7S, Bennington, Vt.

Are you looking for a book to help you explore apple recipes from yesteryear? The newly revised 29 Historic New England Apple Recipes includes recipes for traditional New England apple dishes, fun facts about the unique history of apples and a guide to making cider and cider vinegar. An Amazon #1 New Release.

Available now from Amazon.

Photos courtesy Library of Congress, except for Bramley apple By David Wright – Flickr: Bramley's Seedling Apples, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16594109.

This story about historic apple orchards was updated in 2023.

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The Gropius House: A Quest for Freedom, And A Home

The Gropius House stands as a symbol of modern architecture in Lincoln, Mass. But in 1937, Lincoln itself was a symbol of freedom to Walter Gropius, a German architect who had fled the country during World War II.

Gropius House

Gropius and his wife lived in London for three years after leaving Germany with only their possessions. When Harvard appointed Gropius to its faculty, the couple gravitated toward the historic town. Many of the people who lived in Lincoln descended from the Americans who had fought at Lexington and Concord.

“We began looking around for a house in the beautiful countryside of Boston,” wrote Ise, “and tried to rent a small house in Lincoln, one of the three towns… that had been the site for the first battle for independence…

Gropius House living room

“Freedom,” however, did not mean dressing up in period-era clothing for battlefield reenactments or buying an 18^th-century home and filling it with Colonial Revival furniture. It meant designing a modern house in the style of the Bauhaus, the German modernist school that Gropius had founded.

The Gropius House

But Walter Gropius couldn’t afford to build a house.

As luck would have it, Gropius and his wife attended a dinner party held by Helen Osborne Storrow, a philanthropist and wife of James J. Storrow, a prominent banker. She was intrigued by Gropius, who would soon head Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. So she gave him a piece of land to build on and loaned him the money for the house.

Gropius built a simple, efficient contemporary home that melded industrial and traditional New England architectural materials. He used a fieldstone foundation, white painted wood, a brick chimney and a screened-in porch. Many of the fixtures were ordered from catalogs. It cost $18,000 to build. He explained what he was trying to do:

…I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate. This fusion of the regional spirit with a contemporary approach to design produced a house that I would never have built in Europe with its entirely different climatic, technical and psychological background.

Gropius attached towel bars to radiators, anticipating the heated towel rack

Gropius also believed that an architect should work with the user to design a building. He consulted his 12-year-old adopted daughter Ati about her bedroom. She wanted to bring her friends directly to her room, so Gropius added a metal spiral staircase to the front of the house — near a large window, so adults could see who was coming and going. He even designed treads that scraped the dirt off the children’s shoes.

Many of the Gropiuses’ adult friends visited them in Lincoln, including Alexander Calder, Joan Miro, Henry Moore and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Avant-garde Weimar

When finished, the Gropius House created a sensation. Composer Igor Stravinsky, lecturing at Harvard, was so anxious to see it that he and his new bride visited it scarcely an hour after their wedding in March 1940. “A taste of avant-garde Weimar within walking distance of Walden Pond,” gushed one critic.

Mrs. Storrow was so pleased she let three other Harvard professors build Modernist houses on her land. She made the same arrangement with Marcel Breuer that she made with Gropius. Breuer built a house next door.

Walter Gropius

Not everyone liked it. A neighbor, James Loud, called it a chicken coop. Some questioned its durability — until the house came through the New England hurricane of 1938 with minimal damage.

Walter Gropius lived in the house until he died on July 5 1969 at the age of 86. In 1974, his wife Ise donated it to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, and lived in it until her death in 1983.

In 2000, the Gropius House was declared a National Historic Landmark. It is now owned by Historic New England and is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday (June 1 – October 15, and weekends (October 16 – May 31).

This story was updated in 2022.

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