172 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
May, Ig11 
The Modern Kitchen 
By George E. Walsh 
Cc ME accept without question the idea that the 
kitchen should be both clean and _ sani- 
tary, but we are not always so sure that 
the ‘‘efficiency” of the kitchen is a matter 
of vital importance to every member of 
the household. Yet the kitchen is the 
= laboratory of the house where are pre- 
pared all of our meals and where nearly three-fourths of 
the actual housework must be performed. ‘The arrange- 
ment and equipment of the kitchen must, therefore, exert 
a more or less influence upon the whole matter of house- 
keeping, even to that of keeping servant girls. A dark, 
gloomy, and poorly arranged and equipped kitchen has 
Fig. 1—A convenient arrangement of kitchen 
sink and closets: 
been responsible for the loss of many good 
girls, who, otherwise satisfied, would not 
consent to work under such depressing 
surroundings. 
Until recently architects have not given 
the designing of the kitchen its proper 
value. It was generally the last room 
to consider in making plans for a house, 
and consequently it was tucked away in 
some corner without much thought of its 
suitableness or efficiency. Even its size 
was not carefully considered in its rela- 
tionship to the rest of the house. Even 
to-day we find this matter of size of the 
kitchen one of great variation. One 
house will have a small, cramped kitchen, 
and another an unusually large and com- 
modious affair. Both are wrong from the standpoint of 
the housewife who must use her kitchen as a workshop. 
The objections to the large kitchen may be apparent from 
a little calculation. For instance, in the preparation of 
es 
Fig. 2—-A different arrangement with the same principle of economy 
nearly 1,100 meals a year, it is estimated that a woman 
will have to walk about 200 miles, if the distance from the 
kitchen range to the dining-room is only 25 feet. If we 
add five feet to this walk, as the result of an unnecessarily 
large kitchen, the number of steps required will increase 
the distance by some 40 miles a year. 
There should be some definite ratio between the size 
of the economically arranged kitchen and the size of the 
house. Reduced to a scientific basis, it is estimated that for 
a house suitable for a family of five or under, the kitchen 
should average ten by twelve feet, and for larger families 
twelve by fourteen would be sufficient. Seldom should 
the kitclten exceed fourteen by fifteen feet even for the 
larger houses. Economy of time and 
labor in the kitchen must in this respect 
be considered as the most important 
factor in its efficiency. Architects in 
cities where buildings touch one another 
find the problem of designing the kitch- 
en, so as to get the maximum of day- 
light in it, a most difficult and puzzling 
one, but it is a maxim of the pro- 
fession that the kitchen must in some 
way be arranged around the outside of 
the house, if it can be possibly done, so 
that there are outside openings. Even 
so it is not always accomplished. But in 
the suburbs and country no such problem 
confronts the designer. It is easy enough 
to build the kitchen so that it will get all 
of space as Fig. | 
the daylight needed. But for sanitary and other reasons, the 
kitchen of the country house should be arranged so that 
it will get sunlight as well as daylight, for at least a few 
hours of each day. The sun is the greatest purifier and 
