Hoosier Cabinets
Since about the year 1900, the uniquely styled Hoosier kitchen cabinets have been in American kitchens. Initially, a company based in New Castle, Indiana, Hoosier Manufacturing Co. started manufacturing this type of kitchen cabinet. While the Hoosier Company pioneered this unique style of kitchen cabinet in the US market over the years the label Hoosier cabinet has become a generic name to describe this unique style, as many of the manufacturers were baed in the Hoosier State of Indiana.
Today there are several companies who make cabinets that are recognized as Hoosier style cabinets. And it's not uncommon for small artisans to make replica Hoosier cabinets as well. They are often associated with Depression era antiques. In the days before kitchens had built in cabinets, these free standing cabinets were the work center of the kitchen. Besides the Hoosier company, some of the old Hoosier kitchen cabinet makers were McDougall, Sellers, Kitchen Maid, Nappanee and Wilson and Boone.
Features of the Hoosier kitchen cabinets:
A Hoosier cabinet had a distinctive structure to it. The three main parts included a base section. This base would have a door that opened to a large storage section, and next to it were a set of drawers, typically three of them.
An original Hoosier kitchen cabinet was an oak wood cabinet with special features like flour bins, four to eight spice jars, sugar bins, pull out porcelain work stations and tin bread drawers. In addition, it usually had a big adjustable shelf, housed in its upper cabinet area and a sliding lower oak wood shelf, housed in its lower cabinet area. To complement this arrangement, it often included coffee and tea canisters and a salt box.
The top section is not as deep and typically has several smaller compartments, often with doors. The most unique feature is between those two section, where there is a sliding countertop, which can be extended to create larger worksurface. This countertop had porcelein surface, which tolerated kitchen activities like cooking well. The footprint of this assembly is about two feet deep by four feet wide and they seill stand five to six feet in height. They were typically made from oak.
There is a healthy market for original antique Hoosier cabinets. Replica units are also readily available, and many merchants can be found online.
