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Historical Hall
Rare and beautiful decorative arts fill four period room settings ranging from 1800-1900 in the Museum's Historical Hall.
In early pioneer days the majority of American families did not live in very close proximity to one another and each farmstead had to be almost entirely self-sufficient. The ideal place to settle and build a home was near a fresh water source, a river or spring. Otherwise the family would have to dig a well.
Most early Ohio settlers lived in small, bare, poorly lit houses. On the Frontier, the dwellings were usually constructed of logs with only one or two rooms.
By the 1860s, inexpensive factory-made replicas of costly handmade furniture allowed middle class families to maintain a fashionable interior. American mills made fine-quality wallpaper, carpets, and textiles at reasonable prices. People now began to "match" furniture in each room, rather than using a hodgepodge of different styles.
Bedrooms provided the only genuinely "private" rooms. Besides allowing people to dress and wash themselves, bedrooms served as private sitting rooms for women who lacked separate facilities on the main floor of the home.
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution came an increased prosperity among the middle class that gave many parents the ability to buy their children what they often lacked themselves as children.
In the second half of the 19th century, nurseries and children's bedrooms, which were new to middle class homes, held new devices. In this child-centered environment, furnishings included special wallpaper and pictures, and child-sized chairs, rockers, tables, and toys. The colonial cradle had been replaced by the metal or wooden crib. The nursery swing, bassinet, and high chair were other new, specialized furniture for child rearing.
The function of parlors or some sort of "best room" transcended social class, economic status or geographic location. Parlors were usually off limits to children. They served as a stage for special domestic events (marriages, funerals, clergymen's calls, courting, holy days, and holiday celebrations) and as the repository of a family's treasured possessions.
During the late Victorian period many decorating styles were revived and combined without concern for unity of style. Most furniture pieces were elaborately machine carved, many with spindle turnings of maple, mahogany or walnut wood. It became fashionable to create very cluttered rooms that included intricate wallpaper motifs with dark colors, heavy velvet draperies, knick-knacks, and photographs and paintings in ornate frames.