The Historic District

...to go with your vintage pink appliances:



https://www.oldhousedreams.com/2019/02/12/c-1920-goldthwaite-tx/

The porcelain enamel on steel cabinets look as good as the day they were installed. The green floor is a somewhat daring combination. I love the pink formica countertops, too. Sadly the original wall oven is gone, but the original stovetop remains.

Someone made some daring decorator choices with this house, including a mint green on green living room with pink velvet dining room chairs and dramatic draperies. It is very Hollywood Regency. I'll bet someone who lived in this house was very glamorous !

It seems that after WWII pantries suddenly became obsolete and storage moved into the kitchen, with a mind-boggling number of cabinets. The typical set-up isn't all that different today (except for islands and the removal of the living-room wall) but, wow, what a difference in style. It is an awful lot of pink.

I'd say pink and green is a classic combination. I like the band of pink in the floor. I'm ruminating on replicating that detail using VCT.

The owner of that kitchen could find a stainless steel oven from that era without much trouble if he/she were motivated to do so. I see them pretty regularly on Craigslist.

i'd say after 1945 kitchen cabinets became more popular...easier to retrieve the all new tin cans of
'fresh' fruit and vegetables!!

I LOVE that kitchen...given a choice, I would go with light green over pink and a stainless wall oven over black...also, i'd prefer painted walls to the wallpaper...

thanks for sharing!
...jade

Manalto wrote:It seems that after WWII pantries suddenly became obsolete and storage moved into the kitchen, with a mind-boggling number of cabinets. The typical set-up isn't all that different today (except for islands and the removal of the living-room wall) but, wow, what a difference in style. It is an awful lot of pink.

The 50's really pushed HARD for middle class gigantism - big cars and sprawling suburban homes - as well as super conspicuous consumerism. The 50's were when people were successfully indocrinated into a disposible mindset, too.

None of the marketing for those lovely cabinets shows a woman displaying all her home canned preserves in the ultra modern cabinets. It was all prepackaged food. Suburban marketing from that period focuses on the style and value and space of the new development - but I can't recall ever having seen any materials that emphasized how much larger a vegetable garden the new suburban home could be. It was all slim housewives in heels and barbeques on the patio and the carport, and clean children.

I mean it was a horrible trick - to promote this wasteful way of living. I have a stash of vintage canning jars. This (Canadian) brand, Crown, typically dated the jars on the bottom. Imagine how many times that 1945 jar got re-used (and is still in use to store my spices) vs an aluminum can that was used once and discarded.

That said - I do have a soft spot for the colors and styling of 50's kitchen. Things were still really "built" then, too.

heartwood wrote:I LOVE that kitchen...given a choice, I would go with light green over pink and a stainless wall oven over black...also, i'd prefer painted walls to the wallpaper...

I looked for a light green kitchen for you, Jade, but they seemed a little scarce. Lots of yellow cabinets, lots of aqua, and an unusual multi-colored kitchen with lilac lower cabinets and grey upper cabinets. I thought that was the design trend du jour - but someone got there first. Though I suspect the purple cabinets were for more of a niche consumer, as I have seldom seen them, even in the nuttiest cabinet, linoleum or plumbing fixture ads.

Perhaps the Texas homeowner was influenced by this advertising material:



I sure love the bold mix of unusual color combinations - with color on every surface. No white subway tile !

I...don't even know what to say. Wow. That's a lot of pink. But at least they used varying shades of pink, and I, too, like the green floor with the pink band.

I particularly like the purple and baby blue kitchen.

This was also the time pink and green bathrooms came into style. From what I have read, it was because they were Mamie Eisenhower's favorite colors.

thanks for looking for my green kitchen willa! not the ugly avocado green that was popular with shag rugs in the 1970's....I hope you saw the sarcasm in my post about 'fresh' fruit and veggies....the downfall of being outdoors tending to one's garden and eating good fresh produce...though, happy to say, it's coming back! I laugh when I see claims of 'grass fed' beef...yea, well that's what cows would eat naturally before they were put on corn and kibble and ground beef bones!
....jade

A lot of this colourful stuff was influenced by a sense of optimism after the war, every thing was comming up roses in the US, and Canada to a lesser extent, America became the predominant world power.
Mean while in Europe the optimism was over shadowed by national debt and the rebuilding effort. So a much more somber atmosphere. I believe GB were still on rationing to 1954 so any thing new no matter what the colour was a big deal.
Also, America’s industrial might had no war material to produce so they turned to making all sorts of durable goods at mass produced consumer prices so all of a sudden the fancy coloured enamels on your brand new tin cabinets was not a issue of affordability.

Jade, don’t forget all that Birds Eye frozen veggies cramming those little freezers.

gothic, I believe you are right about rationing in England...my mom grew up in the north of England and good fresh food, sugar, flour, meat, eggs were all rationed for years after the war...
because this forum is typically free of political commentary, I will say that, as a pacifist, i'd prefer a less dominating and less materialistic society in which to thrive...
...jade