Historic Passthrough: What Was Its Purpose?

Old houses have a way of setting your imagination aflame. But as you stomp through their creaky halls, run your fingers over the worn woodwork, you can’t not think about the historic passthrough what these spaces are, and wonder — who lived here? What were their lives like?

At Keepsake Manor, a house constructed in 1797, that’s all the more true. The house is full of tiny fragments that suggest its history, but there is one detail that stops you in your tracks: a wooden passthrough cabinet between two interconnected rooms.

It’s not just the very cabinet that is so puzzling — it’s the specifics. Each side has a lock. There’s a little lockable drawer, too. And there’s an old alarm clock on top of it all. It seems to have had a purpose, but whatever can it have been?

Either for passing notes or valuables between rooms. Perhaps there was something to keeping the household. Or perhaps — just perhaps — it is a reminder of the fact that the home is a place of work. Might a doctor have used it with patients? The cabinet might be a historic passthrough that had immense value in its day.

A Peek Into the Past

In the 18th and 19th centuries, homes were not only where people lived. They were where you might catch life in the act. Families operated businesses and worked as farmers, and raised children, and sometimes even practiced a profession like law or medicine — all out of their home.

And doctors in particular often did business where they slept, especially on farms and in rural stretches. They didn’t have clinics or offices as we have today, and they would use part of their own home to see patients. One room could be the waiting room, and another would be the consultation or treatment area. And this made the case for a historic passthrough cabinet all the more practical.

Passthrough cabinet in Keepsake Manor: That passthrough cabinet in Keepsake Manor is starting to make sense in light of that. Perhaps it was a way to move things from room to room, drugs, patient notes, instruments, with no break in workflow. And the locks? Those would have been ideal for keeping sensitive documents or valuable equipment from prying hands.

The Clock on Top

Then there’s the clock. At first glance, it makes for an odd thing to hang from a cabinet. But back in an era when few people had watches (let alone smartphones), a fine clock was a tool essential to the management of time itself. This might have been a pivot of the historic passthrough cable.

If the passthrough was a doctor’s office, the clock could have been a way to help appointments keep to schedule. Perhaps it was there to help the doctor time treatments; to tell him when it was time to go on to the next patient.

It’s a scene that one can easily imagine: a physician noting the time, scribbling a quick note, and closing a drawer, to meet the next person waiting in the next room.

A Design for Privacy and Security

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the passthrough is how much intentional design it had. Privacy in the cabinet was clearly considered, evidenced by the fact that each side was lockable individually. “If one was the space for the patient, and the other was a private room, the cabinet would have allowed the objects to pass from one side to the other without an intrusion in the space of the other,” said Toffolo. This adds a historical element to this passthrough cabinet.

The locking drawer is also curious. Was it the medicine cabinet? Patient files? Money? In an era when safes were not widespread, it would have been smart to have a secure place to stash valuable objects or sensitive documents.

It is also conceivable that the cabinet served a sanitation function. The need for cleanliness was crucial, particularly among doctors, back in the days before antibiotics. The passthrough could have helped facilitate the exchange of items without the doctor or patient having to enter the other room, minimizing the potential for spreading germs.

Or Could It Be Something Else?

Not that all solutions to mysteries are singular, of course. Old houses, such as Keepsake Manor, were commonly renovated taken and reused by new owners throughout time and this cabinet could have held many items for many purposes.

Some other ideas include:

• A Household Helper: It may well have been an accessory for the choreography of daily life in a busy household, making it possible for servants to pass trays, linens or correspondence between rooms out of sight of the family.
• A Secure Storage Spot: Those locks might let people know that it was a good place to keep valuables, such as jewelry, money or important papers.
• A Shared Workspace Tool: If the rooms in question were ever set up as studies or offices, the cabinet may have made it a breeze to transfer books, papers or supplies from one to the other, serving as a historic passthrough for whatever you might need.

That’s the beauty of a feature like this — it’s fun to imagine all the ways it could have been used, and each possibility tells a little bit of a different story.

A Reminder of the Past

In the end, the passthrough at Keepsake Manor is more than a silly piece of architecture. It’s a glimpse of how people lived and worked in a world that seemed divertingly dissimilar to ours. Every lock, every hinge, even that clock up there says that this was a place where a home, and a life, was tied to purpose, practicality and even a little bit of mystery.

Whether it was in a doctor’s office taking care of patients or a family keeping house, it’s a beautiful part of history that still fires imaginations today.