No heat was ever plumbed into the room, so closing the pocket doors meant below freezing temperatures in the winter.
This room was where they laid out family members who had died. The pipe was mfor the melting ice in warm weather until burial, and the pocket doors were meant to keep the body cold until the ground thawed enough to dig a grave in the spring.
When keeping it real gets creepy..........
We forget how that kind of thing works these days...we take for granted we can plant people into the ground whenever we want, probably because we don’t have to dig the grave!