36 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



January, 1908 



The Kitchen 



By John A. Gade 



|HE modern kitchen, though still used to a 

 certain extent as a dining-room for servants, 

 and in the more modest dwellings also as 

 their living-room, is more and more solely 

 employed for the preparation of food. It 

 has become a cooking-room pure and sim- 

 ple, and its location and planning is 

 studied with this in view. 



The kitchen in the country house is naturally an en- 

 tirely different proposition from the city kitchen. It offers 

 practically none of the difficulties, which sometimes are 

 almost impossibilities, that limit and hinder us in every 

 manner in the dark, narrow, ill-ventilated tunnel of a 

 city lot. 



The kitchen, more than any other room in the house, can 

 not be regarded as a unit in itself, but merely as one of a 

 group of several rooms, mutually dependent upon each 

 other's position and relationship. In a limited number of 

 city residences, as well as in a few larger establishments, such 

 as clubs, etc., the architects have endeavored to procure more 

 favorable conditions for the kitchen by the radical step of 

 entirely removing it from its dependencies and placing it in 

 the top story or upon the roof of the structure. The conse- 



quent difficulties of service and servants have, however, left 

 the experiment still a very dubiously successful one. For 

 servants are going to complain at endless "running," the 

 housekeeping is to become complicated and onerous, the food 

 is to be served lukewarm, unless the dependent rooms and 

 their separate arrangements are "handy." Kitchen and 

 pantry must be adjacent as well as close to the dining-room. 

 Kitchen closets, scullery, servants' hall, servants' dining-room, 

 pastry room and cold room must form an organic group, or 

 housekeeping will be found difficult. 



Another consideration in determining the position of the 

 kitchen is that of easy access to it from outside, and easy 

 access for the cook or scullery maid to such stores as can not 

 not be kept in the immediate vicinity. The grocer and 

 butcher and iceman must, if possible, be able to serve the 

 house with their supplies without crossing other apartments 

 or long corridors. Neither should the servant, in her turn, 

 have too far to go to answer their call. 



With this general dependence well in mind, what general 

 conditions are of vital importance in determining the posi- 

 tion of the kitchen? First of all, ventilation. The prepara- 

 tion of the food carries with it, by necessity, odors and heat 

 which must be taken care of and not permitted to penetrate 



A Kitchen Floored, Walled and Ceiled with Tiles 



