Think You Have it Bad? Here’s What Kitchens Were Like A Century Ago

Imagine you’re suddenly transported back in time by 100 years, to your great-great-grandmother’s house. Most of the rooms are quite familiar: the styles are less modern, sure, but the basic setup is the same. The kitchen, however, is different. All the major players are in place — the sink, the stove, some rudimentary form of refrigeration — but they haven’t quite evolved into their modern forms. And the rest of the kitchen, lacking the standardized cabinets and countertops we’re used to seeing, is strange as well. This post is the first in a series of five where we’ll examine the evolution of the kitchen, stylistically and technologically, over the past 100 years. Come with me, if you will, on a little journey through the history of design.

The kitchens of the 1900s – 1920s, although they might seem rudimentary to us now, were actually quite advanced compared to the kitchens that came before. The turn of the 20th century was a time of tremendous modernization in the home, and particularly the kitchen. Between 1900 and 1920, most houses in cities and towns were connected to the municipal water system, which made life in the kitchen a lot easier. And the advent of gas ranges meant that, at least for some homeowners, the days of slaving over fires in hot wood or coal stoves were over.

Early sinks were mounted to the wall, sometimes with attached drainboards, and often had two or four legs, like a piece of furniture. It was considered important to leave the space under the sink open, to allow air to circulate and prevent moisture and decay. Kitchen sinks as we know them, the kind that are integrated into the countertop, wouldn’t come along until much later.

The reason for this had a lot to do with the fact that kitchen cabinets, as we know them, didn’t really exist yet. At the turn of the century, most kitchen furniture (which would’ve included at least a cabinet of some kind and a worktable) was freestanding, and even later on, when people starting adding built-in cabinets, they built the countertops at pretty much whatever height felt comfortable to them. Often the same kitchen would combine different countertop heights, for different applications.

What about the refrigerator? The first refrigerator for home use was created by GE in 1911, but the first at-home refrigerator to truly catch on, GE’s ‘Monitor Top’, didn’t appear until 1927. Even then, the Monitor Top cost a spendy $525 (for comparison, the price of a Model T Ford was about $300). Most American households didn’t have refrigerators until well into the 40s. Until then there was the icebox, basically a furniture-sized ice chest. The icebox was an insulated cabinet, lined with tin or zinc, with a slot for a giant block of ice, delivered weekly by the ice man. Even now, you’ll occasionally meet people who refer to the refrigerator as ‘the icebox’.

I hope you enjoyed this little stroll through history! Next week we’ll be back with more, including the story of how countertop heights became standardized, paving the way for the modern kitchen. Stay tuned.

• A very thorough article about the evolution of the kitchen from 1890 to 1920, from Old House Living
• Old House Online on the history of the kitchen stove.
• Kitchen interiors from 1900 to 1919, from Antique Home Style.
• Antique Home Style‘s gallery of 1920s kitchens.