Dr. Titus Ives House - a beehive oven story

The Titus Ives House is a marriage of a front gable, wood frame house with a later two-story limestone addition. In the wooden house, there was once an eight-foot square central chimney whose greatness included four fireplaces and a beehive oven. Its current owner is Brian  Gorman,  who hopes to restore his architectural gem to its former glory. For the past several years, he has concentrated on the central chimney with its fireplaces, beehive oven and smoke chamber. He credits Billy McMillan, Don Carpentier, and Eastfield Village with teaching him how to build fireplaces and bake ovens. Eastfield Village, near Albany, NY, offers hands-on workshops in early American trades and historic preservation.

Brian raised the chimney working alone, course by course, from the cellar through two floors and the roof until it released the good smells of wood smoke into the out of doors. He singly sought out old bricks and blocks of limestone for the job, and used the right mortar mixes.  He said that, "he learned the size and location of the fireplaces by observation of the mortises, axe cuttings (for clearance) and mortar staining on the adjacent girts (beams)."

The bake oven bricks are laid first as a soldier course in an oval (upright, on end).

View through the oven entrance to the bake oven’s first course of bricks.

"Bricks are then laid horizontally, including half bricks to fit the shape of the dome. There are three layers of brick and mortar in the dome. The dome shape that the bricks are laid upon is a wet sand pile on top of boards laid over cinder blocks in the oven. Once the mortar has cured, you just pull out the cinder blocks and boards, everything falls down and you clean the sand out."

On a Sunday afternoon in September 2021, the owner invited friends to celebrate the first bake in the new oven. He rose early, chopped wood, and built a good hot fire to heat up the bricks he had so carefully laid.

After about three hours, the oven was deemed the right temperature and the charred logs were removed to the nearby fireplace.

Raised loaves of bread (on the right, amateur baker learned not to tamper with raised dough!) were slid into the hot oven ...

where they baked for about twenty minutes emitting that great scent associated with historic kitchens.

Fresh from the oven and ready to be enjoyed.

The mason/baker toasted his successful loaf and the completion (almost) of the chimney and beehive oven project.

Oh yes, there also was pie. A deep dish apple pie was slipped into the still-hot oven after the bread came out. About an hour later, it too was ready to be enjoyed.