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Kitchen Design Moves Worth Remembering

Debra Silber, managing editor

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If you’re one of those people who consider kitchen design as much a science as an art—or if you just enjoy a good, old-fashioned cackle at your elders' expense—check out this 1949 public-service film on the development of the "Step-Saving Kitchen." Connecticut designer Mary Jo Peterson passed it along after I called to tap her brain about the latest kitchen storage solutions, and it’s a hoot. With all the gravity of a nuclear physicist outlining the Manhattan Project, a matronly narrator from the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics explains how "years of research" and painstaking application of "established principles of work simplification" resulted in the design of a highly functional U-shaped kitchen requiring less bending, less reaching and less effort to peel those potatoes, cut those biscuits and can those peas. As you’ll see, though, this wasn't enough to cheer our poor housewife out of a serious flowered-apron funk. Still, it's proof positive that some ideas are worth holding onto (check out the "planning center" and the folding cabinet doors), even after 60 years.

To see how the 1949 version of U-shaped kitchen stacks up to current trends, be sure to check out our latest Kitchen & Bath Planning Guide.

Kitchens for the Rest of Us
by Peter Lemos From the kitchen you have to the kitchen you love $19.95 more info...

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Comments (2)

farmer_girl writes: My house is rural and built in 1948. I found this movie quite exciting. I haven't had a chance to spend time with the man who grew up in this house to ask about the original deign of the kitchen was. It was of interest to note that there was a food storage room, or at my elderly neighbors it was also refered to as the fruit/storage room which was adjacent to the kitchen. Another neighbor has a similar set up but not a well thought out. Both of those kitchens are smaller than mine so I'm eager to learn more. The ideas of different work heights and seeing the organization of the cooking and baking areas has me reevaluating how I want to update, or could some ideas be a retrodate, when I move this kitchen out of the early 1970's. I plan on contacting a local land grant university to see if I could see kitchen plans from this time period. I wouldn't want to replicate the kitchen but more detail would be nice. It seems rather corny for our times, but is great to see an actual snapshot of the past. Thanks so much for this video!
Posted: 1:16 am on March 26th

greenwerle writes: Hmmm, I'm not seeing a link to the actual video. It sounds hilarious though!

Posted: 12:26 pm on December 10th

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