Art
During the Civil War, the Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864 recreated a colonial-era New England kitchen to raise money for wounded soldiers. Visitors paid to step inside this working kitchen and experience cooking and eating as their grandparents had—a nostalgic escape from wartime anxiety into an imagined simpler past.
Art · Full story
You step through the doorway into woodsmoke and the smell of something simmering. A cast-iron pot hangs over the fire, and the heat presses against your face. Women in long skirts move quietly between the hearth and a heavy wooden table, their hands moving through motions they've repeated a thousand times—kneading, stirring, tasting with the tip of a spoon.
Reflect
What draws us to recreate or visit the kitchens and homes of the past—and what do we hope to find there?