Retro Renovation» history

“America’s Kitchens” exhibit in Concord, New Hampshire — retro road trip

pam kueber — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:00:32 +0000

On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart,
the kitchen is the place you can find it;
it dries the wet socks, it cools the hot little brain.”
—E.B. White, 1956

Need a place to point the station wagon this summer vacation? You’ll be sure to torture the pre-teens at “America’s Kitchens,” a new traveling exhibition organized by Historic New England. It has just begun its national tour in Concord, New Hampshire, where it will run through January 17, 2010. Next stops will be Long Island and Cape Cod.

Here’s what the website says about the exhibit:

Kitchens tell stories—about families and women’s roles; preparing food without running water, electricity, or refrigeration; new technologies; changes in gadgets and appliances; and shifts in values and everyday life. The exhibition features vignettes of historic kitchens in colonial New England and 19th-century Illinois, as well as a traditional adobe kitchen in the Southwest, and a 1950s bright blue, “show kitchen.” Through interactive experiences, visitors can learn what it was like to churn butter, share a kitchen memory, or jot down a recipe from one of the many cookbooks available.

Each item in the exhibition tells a story and excerpts from letters and diaries reveal both nostalgic memories as well as despair at the endless drudgery of kitchen work. Although kitchen chores have changed from the multi-tasking of colonial and early 19th-century households—cooking, laundering, making soap and candles, spinning, and minding children—to common activities taking place in kitchen today—paying bills, doing homework, entertaining, and microwaving popcorn—the kitchen remains the “heart of the home.”

Amen. See more information about the exhibit here.

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“America’s Kitchens” – I bought the book, too

pam kueber — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:59:42 +0000

“America’s Kitchens” by Nancy Carlisle, Melinda Talbot Nasardinov, and Jennifer Pustz is possibly the only comprehensive book on the history of the American kitchen. I am reading it right now. This is just the stuff I love: How Hoosier cabinets, frozen food, open plan architecture and other tweaky things changed the way we live in, and use, our kitchens. And I like to hear the story right from the beginning, too…because virtually no development can be understood in isolation. For example, when I was busy researching “Why steel kitchen cabinets?” it took me all the way back to…Florence Nightingale…Another story for another day. I supported Historic New England by paying them full price. You can get an even better deal at Amazon…via my Pamazon store, of course.

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46 years of Aladdin Home catalogs

pam kueber — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:00:24 +0000

WOW, THIS IS AN AMAZING TREASURE TROVE: An online archive of 46 years of Aladdin Home Sales Catalogs, courtesy of Central Michigan University and its Clarke Historical Library. I’m serious: Complete catalogs: Page through for hours and watch the history of middle-class housing styles in the first half of the American 20th century unfold. The catalogs were the principal marketing method for the houses…. So also you get all kinds of little detail that paints a picture of how people lived, what they considered when looking for a house… See the dramatic shifts during the Depression and wartimes, for example. They are little social history books. Aladdin’s were kit houses… manufactured houses like the famous Sears’ models. These kinds of homes are EVERYWHERE across America.

The series starts in 1908, with cottages and $98 hunting lodges and one house, at about $600. As the years progress we see bungalows, capes and Dutch Colonials…barracks during WWII…on into the 50s. The images here are from ’54, the last year for catalogs posted, but the bio says Aladdin, which was based in Bay City, Mich., manufactured homes until 1981.

Here’s some history about the firm:

Begun in 1906 by two brothers, Otto and William Sovereign, the family-owned firm continued to manufacture houses until 1981. Over the firm’s long history it sold over 75,000 homes to both individual and corporate customers.

The records of the Aladdin Company were donated to the Clarke Historical Library in 1996. The almost complete run of company catalogs, full set of sales records, over 15,000 post-World War II architectural drawings, and various other company records create an extraordinary historical resource.

The Aladdin Company records are open for use by the public, having been arranged and described through a grant made by the National Endowment for the Humanities. (Mount Pleasant, by the way, is on the far western side of the state, just north of I-94 where it starts to bend around the Lake. Full-text copies of the annual sales catalogs were scanned through a grant by the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Many thanks to all these great folks! I for one cannot wait to start wading through every single catalog. I love love love this every-person kind of house…I am so excited! My guilty secret, though: I seriously thought about not posting this story, afraid I’d never get you back, like, you’ll be Alice fallen down the rabbit hole into retro-wonderland. But there. I’ve gone and done it anyway.

View the website and catalogs here. … I’ll miss you all.

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