Welcome to 1952. A few years ago I read the terrific book Populuxe
Drexel Perspective dining room suite. Very nice. I love the horizontal red cabinets doors on the hutch. And it’s nice to see dark wood for a change.
The Drexel Perspective living room line and the Drexel Perspective bedroom suite.
Tee hee. Lots of little chrome goodies to organize your small closet. Does anyone still have any of these? Hat racks – two styles. And look at the extendable hooks to hang clothes — kind of a carryover from armoire days?
First reader who puts in chartreuse wall-to-wall carpet and sends me pics wins a prize. Doesn’t chartreuse look beautiful with medium-blue? Note lamp.
I know that lots of folks will flip over this interior. Would you have ever guessed it was 1952? Look at those lamps.
Swinging the pendulum back the totally opposite direction, here’s an early American interior with a very pretty paint scheme. If you have recessed nooks, like this, consider painting them a different color to achieve this very nice effect. What a great way to highlight artwork.
Here is a great shot to the outdoors from an indoor porch or Florida room. Love the pinch pleats. LOVE the wire patio furniture.
In the past I’ve searched for a source for old-fashioned “mill finish” screen doors. I remember finding some, but I have lost the trail. I have two in my basement, scored at estate sales. Lord knows what I will do with them. Meanwhile, my next-door neighbor once told me she threw hers out when she moved in. It had a “P” set into it!!!!
I think that dishwashers must have been hot in ’52 because I found three ads for competing brands in one magazine. Here is a American Kitchens brand dishwasher, touted as eight years in the making. Note how there is one configuration where it is built into the sink base. Is there a dishwasher-only configuration? Does it have its own porcelain top? Anyone ever seen one of these?
Here’s the Crosley. Hmmm. I’m thinking the stand-alone dishwashers were under-counter installations, just like today.
The Youngstown dishwasher loaded from the top. Howdy do, that’s sure to impress the girls from the neighborhood.
Vintage Dutch Boy paint ads have such great color palettes — lots of inspiration here.
A very pretty kitchen from Armstrong. Again: Can you believe this is 1952? It’s definitely foreshadowing the next 10 years of exuberant design to come. Note the floor tile design, floor-tile-design aficionados.
More flooring ideas. I like that basket weave design.
And more floors. Love the kitchen cabinets. Is that his wife, do you think? I think we should start a wacky caption feature, don’t you?
Fantastic Rubbermaid. You see these every now and then NOS MIB. I have one from the 60s — avocado green, with gold flowers. It’s too big for my stove. Drats.
An over-the-top Armstrong bathroom. The wallpaper seems to have an Asian motif … it also reminds me of the Saul Steinberg wallpapers I showed last week.
This is way more typical of what I’d expect to see in a 1952 bathroom. The last gasp of 1940s Hollywood glam style. Those are large Carrera glass tiles (or similar brand) on the wall. Have always adored that American Standard toilet seat. Oh, and the little bitty tub that is really sort of a shower receptor, delicious. Drats, this size tub was still available in the early 2000′s, from Eljer, as I recall.
Speaking of Eljer. They have that massive toilet seat, too. Funny, the details you grow to like. Pretty pretty Ming green.
Pam, great bunch of ads. I noticed a starburst door escutcheon somewhere online in an ad from 1952 and I was surprised by that too, I thought that seemed too early in the era. I found a mill finish screen door with self-storing glass/screen last year at Tru Value Hardware (store will order for you, so no significant shipping costs if you pick up at your local store) and added a decorative screen protector from an original salvaged door that didn’ swing right to use for our front door. Quality of the Tru Value door is OK but I’m having problems keeping the automatic closer working. I have a pic up on my blog.
I feel unfulfilled all of a sudden. My dishwasher has NEVER made me as happy as all those ladies in that ad.
Wow! What Fabulos ideas!!!!
The black and yellow Armstrong kitchen looks very much like the kitchens you would see in Norway until the late 60′s. Norway didn’t have a steel industry, had tons of wood and also took longer to recuperate after the war. So wood cabinets like those, with the slant, were the norm. If I had a penny for all the times I got my fingers pinched in them!
I really dig those slanted cabinets and the little ladder, and the Dutch door. Those were the days, before they had bugs.
Every once in a while you post stuff that really makes me want to go back in time. Not just the look of the styles or designs, but the attitudes they convey seem so much more honest. Chartreuse carpet? I’d do it in a heartbeat.
BTW, the look on that girl’s face in the 1st ad is priceless. It’s SO unflattering that I can’t imagine anyone actually approving that ad. She kinda frightens me.
I think we have some of the K-Veniences shoe racks in our rental house. They were in the master bedroom when we bought it. I think they are sitting in a corner of the storage room now, as we had to take them down during the restoration. I’ll have to give them another look. Maybe I should put them in our house! I could always use more places to put shoes!
Oh! I LOVE that Armstrong kitchen! That is what I neeeeeed!
That little step ladder to reach the overhead cabinets is SO awesome! (My kids would love that ladder!)
What a great bunch of ads, Pam. I love the over-the-top yellow and black bathroom (I have bathrooms on the mind now: we’re getting new linoleum in one of ours!).
And, the chartreuse carpet with the royal blue couch – perfect!
I’ll send you a pic of our living room: royal blue couch, check; chartreuse carpet, uh, not yet, but we do have some chartreuse pillows on the couch.
How did you know I was seriously thinking of chartruese (probably shag or sculpted) carpeting??!! Really I am, it’s either that or a dark aqua/teal/turquoise-y color. But it may be a while before we can replace our ugly light brown carpet, sigh.
My grandparents had chartreuse carpet!! It was soooo pretty, shag too, and she had light peachy pink chairs with ottoman and a yellow chartreuse couch with subtle flowers, loved it all.
All those ads are wonderful Pam! I love the 50s the best, just makes me smile seeing it all.
These are fantastic. Thanks for sharing. I even love the dishes in the dishwashers!
Two comments.
One is on the topic of free-standing dishwashers. I grew up in a metal kitchen (a 1950s addition onto our 1812 house), and we had a free-standing dishwasher on wheels. It had a butcher-block top and acted almost as an island. We rolled it in and out of the way, and hooked it up to the sink faucet with a hose to run. Don’t know if this was common – how funny to think of doing this today!
The second thought is on the “relativeness” of dated interior images. When one considers that before any interior can go to print (or product to market), the setting or home has to be conceived, designed, built, and decorated, then it must be selected, photographed/illustrated, laid out for print, and eventually published. The net result is that some interior images that we see in print could be at least one or two years older than their “date.” This makes some of those remarkable-for-1952 images even more amazing…
Oh my goodness, I love that yellow-and-green basketweave floor and kitchen! Wish I could have that to replace the “tasteful” cherry cabinets and griege tile our house’s last owners put in.
The dining table in the corner of the 6th picture? With the conical legs that square off at right at the top? I just scored an extendable one for free! Someone was throwing it away…and now it’s in my living room. It just needs a sand and re-finish and it will be as good as new. Australian-made, solid eucalypt I believe. Now i just have to find some matching chairs…
I love looking at these because it gives you ideas of how to decorate smaller rooms.
I think regionalism has a big part to play on how new innovations of architecture and style actually pan out in the real world in housing developments.
I’m definitely feeling inspired! We’ll be moving into a 1957 MCM house when I retire and I can hardly wait. Maybe I can get my husband to change the door to the carport into a dutch door, I’ve always wanted one. I recently scored a pristine copy of the 1957 edition of the Better Homes & Gardens Decorating Book. It shows a lot of this same crossover in periods. I figure it was a time when modern was cool, but people were very likely to still have furniture from earlier decades.
Arcalos Bo – I grew up in a house with a portable dishwasher, too. It had the butcher block top and we rolled it to the sink. Dishwashers were “new” back then our kitchen didn’t have room to add a built-in, so we got a portable. I can’t remember if we got it in the late 60s or early 70s.
I bought a similar portable dishwasher when I lived in a small (1952) ranch around 1990 and installed it in the (1948) home we bought in 1993. It was made to convert to a built-in by taking off the butcher block and removing it from the housing to install it.
That green color in the second dining room photo is the exact same color revealed when I started peeling up some wallpaper that I’m going to be removing from my stairwell going up to my bedroom. The top half (and my upstairs) is knotty pine and the homeowners wallpapered fake wood on the bottom half of the stairwell. I’d like to paint it.
These are great inspirational images, Pam!
Be still my heart! It is so difficult to find images of the 1948-1952 era (my house was built in 1949 & I want to avoid the “1950s” look, just to be different!). Thanks for posting this!!
I LOVE that library ladder in the wood-slant-front illustration!
And…dirty-minded I says it’s the neighbor, not the wife. The wife would be pointing at something in the floor layout! LOL!
Yes, those dishwashers on wheels were common into the 60′s. They were rolled over to the sink to be loaded after dinner, but not usually turned on until bedtime, because they had to be connected to the kitchen faucet (making it unusable for anything else) and that placed them inconveniently in the middle of the kitchen, tethered to the faucet. The new house my parents bought in 1961 had a built-in dishwasher in AQUA! (matching the aqua stovetop, aqua ovens, aqua refrigerator and aqua sink). Most people I knew didn’t have dishwashers until the mother of the house convinced the breadwinner father that it was necessary–and then they were just as excited as the ads suggest. It was a different time!
Pam thanks for showing some early fifties designs, they definetly more in line with our house as it was built in ’51! I have tons of great ideas now!
A few years ago- On Ebay I purchased a complete set of mint Better Homes and Gardens….1938 to 1951. I don’t think I paid more than 30 bucks, well worth the hours of inspiration and entertainment.
These mags are still offered and I would certainly purchase them in group offerings-rather than a single issue at a time $.
Thanks so much for this, Pam. My little cape was built in 1953 – my kitchen has salmon tile halfway up the wall like the yellow kitchen with the dutch door and naughty neighbor
.
I am dying over the lamps in the living room 5th photo down – and the chairs. LOVE!
I want the dutch door. In fact when buying my new front door last year I actually looked for one. but couldn’t find one–had I only known about this website then….
These are great!! Chartreuse carpet? I would LOVE IT!! (but not with my little peeing dog friends.) Love the black and white chairs in the slanted cabinet ad..so risque!
and I’m with AtomicBowlerDave…the neighbor being wistful over what he could do for her…or maybe it’s the woman of the house oggling the tile installer while her husband is hard at work!
In 1968 we moved into a house that had RED RED RED tiles half way up the wall in the kitchen and a blue/black marbled linoleum floor with maple cabinets, I think the wallpaper may have been a red/white & blue print…it didn’t take to long to change the scenery…and yes, we got a portable dishwasher with a butcher block top. Hey, my dad loved my mom and wanted to make it easier for her! HA! We kids were doing the loading and unloading!
Thanks for the great post on 1952, birth year for our little ranch! I love the angled legs on the furniture in the sixth picture.
Pam, this is great. Would love to see more. I live in a house built in 1952. Under (too many) layers of paint, I discovered that every room was wallpapered-most was hideous but the sparkly flamingos in the bathroom were beautiful! In the garage, all that remains of a Dutch door to the backyard is its hinges. I wish they had left the door in place. The only closet goodie I got was a wooden spinning tie rack.
Great post! Love it! I really love these vintage designs (especially those of Drexel). Thanks for posting this.. Hope that you’d post more great stuff!
Wow, should I feel badly that we still use the portable butcher block top dishwasher that my grandparents put in the house in the seventies? We have not gotten around to updating the kitchen yet, and it still works just dandy. (Now I’ve gone and tempted the appliance gods…)
Pam, when I was a child we lived in a little cabin-like house that must have been done in the late 40s early 50s, and we had a great metal screen door with millwork, and it had a big “T” inset into it. I was always convinced that somehow that was just for me, even though we were not the original owners of the house. Kids are dumb
Loved that door!
does anyone have a picture of old built in shoe racks or any idea how to refurbish them? I have rectangular “holes” in all of my closets about 14″W35″H and 4.5″ deep obviously made to hold shoes. However, none of them have hardware or inserts in them any more.
My house has a screen door just like those! It even has a “B” set into it. Good thing my last name begins with a B. Thank you for posting ads from these interim years. Just the inspiration I needed!
Does anybody still make large “Carrera” or “Vitrolite” style glass tiles? Obviously the original companies are no longer in existence, but am looking for something comparable. I don’t have a house (we’re renting an apartment presently), but would like to know what options are available.
I love the red kitchen! We have recently purchased a vintage 50′s motor home. We don’t have the funds to do an out and out authentic restoration on it, but I am looking to see what the 50′s style truly entailed. I love your article and the ads! I now have lots of inspiration to go on! Thanks so much!!!!!!!