89 
i 
November, 1923 
THE PASSING 0 f t h e PANTRY 
Beautiful Kitchen Equipment, Ser^camt Shortage and Economy 
of Space Ha^ce All Conspired to Relegate the Pantry to the Past 
ETHEL R. PEYSER 
I N old times the house without a pantry 
would have been as poorly equipped as a 
home today without a stove. Yet today 
the pantry does things quite unthought of 
in days gone by; sometimes it does not even 
figure in the architect’s plans for the 
smaller house. 
The reason for this change is threefold: 
First, space today is so valuable that the 
room occupied by a pantry is needed for 
other things (usually if there is an extra 
room it is the laundry); Second, an extra 
serving place means extra work which sig¬ 
nifies more servants; Third, the manu¬ 
facturer has so contrived to house the 
pantry materials in a miiltum in parvo 
state, that, except in the larger house, the 
pantry is unnecessary. 
So we see that although a house may have 
a well-equipped laundry, even a place 
wherein the lady of the house can take care 
of her flowers, the pantry, as the pantry, 
has not gone but is swiftly giving up the 
throne to more democratic, utilitarian and 
important uses. 
A kitchen equipped with modern labor- 
saving devices and fittings is not only a 
pleasant place in which to work but, on 
some occasions, in which to dine. From 
the Westinghouse Electric Co. 
The pantry in other times boasted of its 
salad days with triumph, for it was here 
that the salad was prepared and the fine 
glass washed, which was never to see the 
kitchen, because in the culinary dark age 
there was a time when kitchen sinks were 
none too lovely and safe. It was here in the 
pantry, too, that much of the fine china was 
housed; that the cocktails were mixed, etc. 
But now only the largest homes have re¬ 
frigerated pantries, because, so well are the 
refrigerators made today, that if backed up 
against the stove in the kitchen they would 
still make frigid the contraband spiriluous 
{Contimted on page 102 ) 
