48 AMERICAN 
HOMES 
AND GARDENS January, 1906 
The Kitchen 
l=—The: Pilanwand 
the Arrangement 
By Sarah Adams Kellar 
[The first of a series of practical, helpful papers on the kitchen, its place in the house plan, its arrangement and general requirements] 
now being taken in all that appertains to 
the house that more attention is being given 
to the kitchen and its furnishings than has 
hitherto been the custom. ‘This is true, 
whether the kitchen be in a small house in 
which the mistress does her own work, or performs a goodly 
share of it, or in a great mansion where the mistress may 
never enter the kitchen and where the work is conducted by 
a staft of servants with a highly paid chef at the head. 
A separate room for cooking purposes has long been 
recognized as an essential feature of every well planned 
house. Except in dwellings of very low cost, and in certain 
grades of farmhouses, this provision is now universal. Com- 
monplace as the arrangement may now seem, it is a distinct 
improvement over the old, large kitchen, which was at once 
a place to cook in, the dining-room and the room of assembly. 
The kitchen as a separate room, however, has not always been 
what it should be. Any small, low, old place was long re- 
garded as suitable for the very important work required, and 
even to-day there is many a small kitchen quite unsuited, by 
size and situation, for any useful purpose. 
The importance of the kitchen in the house plan is being 
more and more recognized every day. ‘wo widely different 
causes have brought this about. A more intelligent apprecia- 
tion of the house plan, a keener realization of the necessity 
of having only good rooms, no matter what their uses might 
be, a knowledge that any badly lit, badly placed, badly venti- 
lated room means a bad spot in the house, has helped 
mightily in the advancement of the kitchen. And the cook 
herself has been an enormous agent for reform. Her im- 
portance far transcends that of any mere room. As her 
personal estimation of her value has grown, her demands 
for accommodations have increased in proportion. The 
good cook now flatly declines to work in any but a good 
kitchen, and the helpless housekeeper often knows that cooks 
of a very inferior quality will take the same high-minded post- 
tion. So the kitchen has been improved in many ways to meet 
these modern conditions, neither of which are concerned with 
the possibility of doing good work in a good room, but both 
of which unquestionably lead to that result. 
In planning the kitchen it is necessary to know whether 
the work is to be done with servants or without, and if with, 
with how many?—in other words, the scale on which the 
household work is to be performed. All large houses, and 
many small ones, are provided with a butler’s pantry, in 
which the china and glass will be washed and a good deal 
of the serving work performed which, in less fully equipped 
houses, would be done in the kitchen. In very large houses 
the rooms subsidiary to the kitchen and dining-room will 
form an extensive suite in themselves, and will include storage 
rooms and silver safes—very useful places indeed, but which 
the more modest housekeeper must be content to do without. 
Close proximity to the dining-room is essential to the 
kitchen. This facilitates service, furthers the serving of 
warm dishes and brings the two rooms, which properly be- 
long near each other, into immediate relationship. The 
kitchen is generally separated from the dining-room by the 
pantry, which is the antechamber to both, an arrangement 
not only dictated by convenience, but which creates an effec- 
tive and much-needed separation between these two rooms. 
In city houses the economical distribution of space has de- 
veloped the kitchen below stairs, an economical arrangement 
from the view-point of the ground plan, a necessity, perhaps, 
from the space available, but which unquestionably compli- 
cates the household work and at times adds largely to it. 
Even the ever-present dumb-waiter, useful as it is, does not 
always compensate for the difference in floor level. The 
dumb-waiter, by the way, should be carried to the top of the 
house, for there are often heavy articles to be sent up or 
brought down, for which it could be used. The kitchen may 
not be the best possible place in which a house dumb-waiter 
should end, but if one can not be had elsewhere the kitchen 
waiter may be used for general purposes. 
Certain general ideas in planning are immediately ap- 
plicable to the kitchen. It must be well placed; that is to 
say, its situation should involve no inconveniences in the 
internal arrangements. It should have ample light and air; 
if possible, it should have direct sunlight. This, of course, 
can not always be had. In the city house the matter will 
be at once determined by the direction of the street on which 
the house is built, in the suburbs and the country it is likely 
the owner will demand the sunlight for his own living-rooms ; 
but if the house is a large one, with ample ground and floor 
area, direct light can always be given the kitchen, and it 
should invariably be done. If for any reason the kitchen 
fails to have excellent light, the misfortune should be 
remedied by means of glass prisms, which are so abundantly 
used in commercial buildings. In any event there must be 
sufficient light, which must be obtained even if additional 
expense is necessary to secure it. The light is needed not only 
for the work to be done within the room, but for sanitary 
reasons as well. 
The kitchen must also be a thoroughly comfortable and 
convenient room. ‘This does not mean that it must be fur- 
nished in the sense that the other rooms are furnished, but it 
means that the appliances must be sufficient and complete; 
that they be conveniently arranged and so placed that their 
situation will help in the work and not retard it, as will cer- 
tainly happen if convenience in arrangement is overlooked. 
In other words, the kitchen is a room intended for certain 
purposes, many of which are tiresome and laborious, some of 
which are delicate and most of which are more or less irk- 
some. In planning and arranging a kitchen these essential 
matters must be kept thoroughly in mind or it will completely 
fail of the purpose for which it is intended. 
The size of the kitchen is an important point. Shall it be 
large or small? Shall it be compact or diffuse? ‘There is a 
word to be said on both sides. The stock argument in favor 
of small kitchens is that they save steps, that everything is 
at hand, and much labor saved by the close proximity of all 
the apparatus and conveniences. But this may be pushed too 
far. A small kitchen seldom provides space for a refrigerator, 
for it is much too hot. The range and the stationary tubs 
may face each other with so little space between that the 
usefulness of each will be seriously diminished. The matter 
is rather one of scale. ‘The kitchen is apt to be not only the 
workroom, but the rest-room for the servants. 
