Columbia Furnace Stables

Text

Columbia Furnace Stables are one of the original buildings associated with that industrial complex. Though the exact date when they were built is unrecorded, architectural evidence and oral history indicates they may been built not long after the furnace was founded in 1808.

Since the iron furnaces relied on wagons and strong horses to transport raw materials to the furnace and pig iron to market, they would have needed an expansive stable facility to house, raise, and care for the animals they depended on. The extensive size of this structure and the permanence of its stone construction is not unusual.

During the Civil War this building and the nearby superintendent’s house were one of only a few furnace buildings not destroyed by Union troops. It remained a part of the iron making complex until it closed in 1886.

Since then the building has been used in a multitude of ways. At various times apartments, a beauty parlor, and a pool room have been housed here. Sometime in the 1920s or 1930s a service station, designed in a similar fashion, was constructed in front and the site welcomed visitors. Today, its used for limited commercial and residential purposes.