A Niche is Nice

I've always loved niches. So imagine my surprise, when several years ago cracks appeared in our foyer, that formed a nice square.  We've eyeballed this area for two years trying to decide if there was indeed a niche in this area.  So today I decided to peel away the edge and found this.

First, we decided to drill a hole in hopes of possibly seeing into the cavity.  We actually did not even try to look into the hole because when R pulled the drill bit out of the hole some paper backing came out with it.  Ah ha! drywall. This gave us the needed information necessary to go ahead and demo the square. 

Thirty minutes later we had the drywall gone.

Start to finish....one hour.

Now as to why it was covered over.  Who knows.  But based on the color I would say it was sometime before the 1950's which was the peak of the Mamie Pink era.   Our house spent a long time painted the original gold mustard color.  Some areas of the house also have a sage green layer after the mustard but not the foyer or dining room.

Here is the run down on the dining room/foyer colors from first to last.

Mustard gold (niche color)
Grey beige
Mamie pink
Flat white which was sprayed by person from whom we purchased the house.

Since the niche is mustard gold color, it looks like this was an early modification.  Regardless of when it was modified, it's HIS TO RY now.