About 1890, one of two Dusinberre brothers built a home at 22 Dusinberre Road, complete with a small carriage house and, next to that, an outhouse.
All are still standing, seen in the picture at right (Outhouse 1), though a large red pine seems ready to nudge the outhouse towards the carriage house . . . if the red pine shoot moth doesn’t do in the tree first. The builder’s intent was obviously to make things last; he put the outhouse on a poured cement foundation (in all probability, Rosendale cement).
The outhouse is a companionable two-holer, and Joseph and Cathy Gordon, current owners of the property, told me they had found corn cobs inside but thought they might have been put there for effect rather than utility. They did not find any Sears Roebuck catalogs.
Joe reckons the outhouse was in use until the early part of the twentieth century. Until then, water off the roof had been collected in a cellar cistern. From there, a hand pump in the kitchen provided water for the house. In the early 1900s, electricity came to Gardiner, mechanical pumps made modern faucets, and an inside flush, practical, and the old outhouse became a relic.