In Monroe's day, constant activity occurred in the kitchen or service yard to the south of the main house. Servants prepared meals in "the stone kitchen cellar," as Monroe described the basement in his 1809 insurance policy. Stairs offered easy access to the upper gallery porch from the kitchen and adjoining wine cellar. Just a few steps away, water was drawn from Monroe's well.

The neatly arranged kitchen yard still contains the original Smokehouse for curing meats and fish and the Overseer's Cottage, possibly the oldest building still standing on the farm. Between those two buildings stands a reconstruction of the original three room slave quarters, as it was customary for the house servants to live near the main house. On the far side of the kitchen yard, the Icehouse preserved ice cut from a shallow pond and stored between layers of straw or sawdust from Monroe's sawmill.