Enslaved craftsmen working under master builder Abner Cook built the Slave Quarters building in 1855. There was a separate kitchen on the property, so this building would have been used as workspace and living quarters for the enslaved people who lived on the property. Washington and Mary Hill sold five enslaved people to fund the purchase of the property and construction of the house, but those individials likely never occupied this building. Several of the property renters between 1856 and 1865 were enslavers; men, women, and children forced to labor for them would have inhabited the building.

Domestic staff employed by the US Army likely used the building in the decades immediately after the Civil War while men and women who worked for the Neill and Cochran families from the late nineteenth century through the 1940s continued to use this building in various ways.

Before indoor plumbing, cisterns were essential to daily life on the property. These underground tanks collected rainwater from the roof, storing it for drinking, cooking, washing, and other household needs. In a region where reliable surface water was limited, cisterns made it possible for residents to endure long, hot summers and periodic droughts.

Though the ca. 1900 rear addition to the house was built over it, one of the historic in-ground cisterns can be seen through the Plexiglass panel on the north side of the house.

The original dirt floor of the Slave Quarters building was about a foot lower than the present threshold. The original floor depth can be seen today in the excavated area around the set kettle. The current brick pavers were added during a restoration in 1966.

This view of the first-floor door opening during restoration in 2015 shows the layers of the original threshold and floor level and the 1966 brick pavers set in the concrete slab.