Dining Room - House of the Future
The steam heating system is original to the house, which was one of the first in the state, if not thee first, to have central steam heat. Steam heat was just one more state-of-the-art innovation that Henry and Cremora Rogers utilized to show off. Afterall, at the time, a house heated without fires in the fireplaces bordered on the magical. The original round-finned radiators, called “fish scale” radiators, are still in use after over 140 years.
The other more conventional radiators were installed in the 1930s when Hearthstone served as a tearoom (a small restaurant). In fact, the name Hearthstone was used for the restaurant – because of the house’s nine fireplaces - and the building has been known by that name ever since.
While not used as the primary source of heat, a fireplace could be lit when the weather turned cold to take the chill off of a room. The fireplaces burned bricks of coal. The extra bricks were kept in the decorative boxes next to the fireplaces. These were called hods.
