Early American homes relied on open hearths for heat and cooking until cast iron stoves caught on in the 1800s. Fireplaces were pretty wasteful, sending most of their heat up the chimney, which is why Benjamin Franklin and Count Rumford both spent time in the 1700s working out designs that pushed more warmth into the room.
Central heating changed the picture. It showed up in fashionable city row houses by the late 1850s, and by the bungalow era of the early 1900s, comfortable central heat was essentially expected in a new house.
Builders added fireplaces anyway. Gustav Stickley, whose magazine The Craftsman ran from 1901 to 1916, treated the hearth as the center of the living room, and Craftsman homes often paired a brick or fieldstone fireplace with a cozy built-in inglenook.
Other styles had their own take. Colonial Revival houses, popular since the 1876 Centennial sparked new interest in early American design, borrowed paneling and mantel details from the 1700s, while the 1920s and 1930s brought mirrored surrounds and Art Deco lines.
Older fireplaces got a closer look during the Depression. In 1933, the Historic American Buildings Survey began sending architects and photographers out to document the country’s historic buildings, partly to put unemployed professionals back to work, and the Library of Congress still holds the results.
After World War II, the fireplace got simpler. Some modern houses dropped the mantel entirely, leaving a clean opening in a wall of brick or stone, and Levitt’s 1953 Levittowner ranch put a big brick fireplace right in the middle of its living area.
The photos below date mostly from 1899 to 1948, covering early 1800s Southern homes, a 1912 Craftsman living room and a set of colonial-style rooms featured in Better Homes & Gardens in 1941. Many come from the Library of Congress, and a few show fireplaces that were already a century or two old when the camera found them.
1. Antique mantels: This cast iron example from 1860 in a 1940s country-style living room
2. Wormsloe Plantation fireplace – Savannah, Georgia
Home of Dr and Mrs Craig Barrow – the building itself dates to c1820
3. Vintage fireplaces: In the Cupola House (photo from 1936)
Cupola House, Edenton, Chowan County, North Carolina
4. North Carolina Governor’s home (photo from 1937)
Home of Samuel Johnston, who was North Carolina’s Governor in 1787, and the first US Senator from NC. Building dates to 1801.
5. Art deco-inspired vintage fireplace mantel from the 1930s
6. Antique original Craftsman fireplace and living room (1912)
SEE MORE: What is a Craftsman house? See exteriors of more than 70 classic Stickley-style homes
7. Antique fireplaces: Kirksey House in Eutaw, Alabama (photo from 1939)
8. Living room in a model home with a elegant fireplace (1936)
9. Upstairs sitting room fireplace, New Jersey
Second floor sitting room view of fireplace and windows, showing the projecting fireplace and mantelpiece at the Henry Miller House on Main Street, Oldwick, Hunterdon County, NJ
MORE: 16 beautiful Victorian homes & mansions in old Detroit from the early 1900s
10. Antique fireplaces: Edmund Cogswell Converse house (photo from 1908)
Home located in Greenwich, Connecticut
11. Home of Mrs Herbert Coppell, Pasadena (photo from 1917)
MORE: A dozen fashionable Victorian fireplaces from 1880
12. Henry Miller House fireplace
Main Street, Oldwick, Hunterdon County, New Jersey
13. Antique fireplaces: Tyrconnell, Baltimore, Maryland (Photo from 1930s)
14. Vintage 1940s fireplace screen – Flexscreen
15. Vintage fireplaces: Mary Scott Townsend House, Washington DC (Photo from c1910)
ALSO SEE: George Eastman House: The Kodak inventor’s mansion & photography museum in Rochester, New York
16. Georgian fireplace in a paneled wall (1941)
Backed by a paneled wall, this Georgian fireplace might well be in a living room. But here, framed by the canopy of a great bed, it turns a bedroom into a grand place for evening reading or chats.
17. Early American fireplace (1941)
An Early American fireplace, framed in white stone and embraced by the wainscoted plank paneling of the walls, snuggles into its corner to smile out over the whole room. The tiny mantel is graciously plain.
18. Bedroom made more inviting by a fireplace of Colonial design (1941)
Here’s a bedroom made more inviting by a fireplace of Colonial design. See the tiny wood cupboard at left, the polished brass andirons and fender, and the discreet tidiness of the graceful wood molding.
19. Georgian style paneled wall with fireplace (1941)
If you’ve ever thought Georgian style formal, look well at this delicately paneled fireplace wall, with its graceful flanking cupboard doors, its lofty opening, and then feel yourself warmly welcomed.
MORE: 20 elegant antique bathrooms from the 1900s: Sinks, tubs, tile & decor
20. American Colonial updated with modern styles (1941)
Here are a fireplace and wall in an American-Colonial home more than two centuries old. But see how pleasing to the modern taste are the corner cupboard, paneling, and whitewashed plaster fireplace.
21. Corner fireplace with cupboard (1941)
Unusual — and warmingly charming — is this corner fireplace with its china cupboard above. Notice how the curves of the hearth, fireplace opening, cupboard back, shelves, and molding all blend in harmony
22. Dutch Colonial circular fireplace (1941)
This corner fireplace’s circular hearth, rough plaster, and discreet framing and mantel of wood might mark it as Dutch Colonial, or it might be Early American to fit scalloped cupboard-bookcase.
23. Elegant mirrored fireplace from 1920
24. Antique fireplace style, as seen in the 1940s
25. Fireplace at the Chimney House (photo from 1938)
Chimney House, 113 Walnut St., Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina
26. Vintage fireplace with wood mantel in a paneled living room (1948)
27. Fireplace in the Long House, Kansas City, MO (Photo from 1986)
View from the library, showing the fireplace and built-in bookcases. R A Long House, 3218 Gladstone Boulevard, Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri
28. Decorative arch & fireplace in Georgia home (photo from c1899)
Interior view of room showing chandelier, decorative arch, fireplace, and furniture. Photo from “Negro life in Georgia, USA.,” compiled and prepared by WEB Du Bois, v. 3, no. 286.
29. The Johnson home’s fireplace in New Orleans
Frances Benjamin Johnston’s home, 1132 Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana (Photo from between 1920 and 1950)
30. Vintage fireplace with no mantel – Midcentury modern style (1948)
