At least three standing buildings may be coeval with the River House. The closest, located just 20 yards southwest, is a 1 1/2-story frame structure that probably originally served as a detached kitchen, laundry and servants' quarters. Enlarged and remodeled in this century to serve as a single-family dwelling, it features the standard central-chimney, two-room plan typical of domestic service buildings and quarters on Virginia plantations, from the 18th through mid-19th centuries. This building was probably erected at the same time as the River House, or when it was enlarged in the late 1840s.
The
original section of the kitchen/quarters is an 18 x 39 foot structure with gable
roof and brick foundations. The slightly inset, 1 1/2-story wing on its east end
was added ca. 1950. Presently the building has a symmetrical, 5-bay front with
central doorway opening into a small vestibule beside the chimney.
Originally, it probably had a four-bay front with two windows flanked by
two entries. The dormers are modern, as is all interior sheathing and detailing.
The only interior features that remain intact are the huge (six feet wide and
five feet tall) fireplace openings with twelve-inch-square pine lintels.
A 1913 photo of the kitchen and River House shows the original roofline of the building, without dormers but with a single gable-end window lighting each end of the loft. Buildings of this type were standard fixtures on 18th- and 19th-century plantations. The downstairs rooms served as general domestic work areas, with one room being used for cooking and the other for a variety of tasks, including laundering, soap making and food preparation. The two upstairs loft rooms would have served as sleeping quarters for two or more household servants.
Behind (to the southwest of) the kitchen are two small mid-20th-century outbuildings, a smokehouse and a poultry house. (This yard no doubt originally contained a number of service buildings, including a smokehouse, dairy, woodshed and other storage structures). The smokehouse, a ten-foot-square, weather boarded frame structure with pyramidal roof and brick foundations, is a careful ca. 1950s copy of a traditional antebellum Virginia smokehouse. Sheathed with beaded siding attached with cut nails, it boasts a small spear-shaped wooden finial. The chicken house, a 6 x 9 foot structure sheathed with vertical boards, remains unaltered. An interesting interior feature is its original roosting shelves.