"With America's industrial revolution in the rearview, the government begins promoting homemaking to young women as an exciting new science just as useful to maid as to mistress. Meanwhile, kitchens are adopting technology like mass-produced metal stoves, the early iterations of refrigerators (just iceboxes, at first) and electrification. The electric kitchen leads to the first generation of countertop tools including automatic toasters and stand mixers."
"The Hoosier Manufacturing Company publishes The Kitchen Plan Book, which offers readers 50 blueprints for kitchens designed by leading architects and architectural draughtsmen of America. They incorporate the new technology of modular, mass-produced cabinetry. To this point, kitchen storage meant free-standing furniture, simple shelves, or cabinets built on-site by a carpenter, said Brent Hull, a Texas-based builder who specializes in the history of millwork, especially in the kitchen."
Government promotion reframed homemaking as a scientific profession for young women and presented household management as useful across social classes. Kitchens adopted mass-produced metal stoves, early refrigerators (iceboxes), and electrification, which produced a first generation of countertop tools like automatic toasters and stand mixers. Many of those early small appliances remained largely unchanged a century later. Manufacturers and publishers offered standardized kitchen plans and modular cabinetry, replacing freestanding storage and onsite carpentry. Architects applied domestic science principles to kitchen layouts, exemplified by Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky’s compact, function-driven Frankfurt Kitchen with integrated, labeled storage and fitted components around anticipated appliances.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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