Front 1 Casemates

The casemates along Front 1 and Front 2 were initially designed to be the quarters for the enlisted soldiers and personnel at the fort. These rooms were not as nicely furnished as the officers’ quarters on Front 3. Each room had a fireplace and the soldiers slept on bunkbeds with 30-40 men per room. The would do their cooking outside using large pots set on the granite pavers in front of their rooms. When the fort was converted for use as a prison camp for confederate prisoners during the civil war, these rooms were used to house the enlisted prisoners as well. The rooms were dived in two, the room facing the outer wall would hold two cannon of varying types and sizes while the inner room was the living spaces for the soldiers and prisoners. The arched traverses for the cannon are still visible today along the exterior wall of Front 1. Later, after Battery Stevenson was installed, these casemates saw use as a storage magazine for shot and powder for the guns overhead. You can see the remnants of the rail system that would have transported material in to the casemate and the dumb waiter system that would have raised the shot and powder to the guns on the upper level.