Communal Kitchen & Cooper Shop Museum

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About Communal Kitchen & Cooper Shop Museum

During the communal era, the Amana Colonies had more than fifty communal kitchens where women prepared five meals a day for about thirty to forty people each. The Middle Amana kitchen is the only one that remained as it was when the communal system ended in 1932.

The visit goes through the kitchen, with the large brick stove, the sink and utensils, the pantry and the room where men and women ate at separate tables, in silence. Guides explain how tasks were divided and what meals were like. Outside is the garden that supplied the kitchen.

Next door is the cooper’s workshop, which made barrels, buckets and wooden tubs for the villages. Both buildings are part of the colonies’ historical society museums and are open from May to October.