Food Service at Monticello

As I mentioned, I paid close attention to the features at Monticello that revolved around food.  So it should come as no surprise that my favorite part of Thomas Jefferson’s home was located by the dining room.

Because Jefferson (TJ or Teej, as we began to call him the more comfortable we became on his grounds) did not want noises from food service to interrupt the conversations with his dinner guests, he had a revolving serving door installed between the hallway and dining room.  Servants collected dirty dishes from the previous course as they placed the food for the next course on the shelves before spinning the door back into the dining room.  I couldn’t take a photograph in the house, but you can see how it works in this short (retro!) video. 

With just a quick—well more likely a slow, intentional—spin of the door, the dirty dishes were out of sight.  What the video doesn’t show is the distance between the kitchen and dining room.  The servants made quite a trek from the opposite end of the basement to deliver the courses.  And something tells me the Temperature Danger Zone wasn’t considered…

What do you think of the serving door?  Minus the whole slave labor thing, could it be useful today?  What are your thoughts?