The History of the American Kitchen: How It Became What It Is Today

1915

With America’s industrial revolution in the rearview, the government begins promoting homemaking to young women as an exciting new science — “just as useful to maid as to mistress.”

Meanwhile, kitchens are adopting technology like mass-produced metal stoves, the early iterations of refrigerators (just iceboxes, at first) and electrification. The electric kitchen leads to the first generation of countertop tools including automatic toasters and stand mixers. A century later, these appliances have barely changed.

“Is not housework as worthwhile studying as the shoveling of coal? Is not housekeeping the biggest, the most essential industry of all?” Bulletin of the American School of Home Economics, 1915

1920

The Hoosier Manufacturing Company publishes “The Kitchen Plan Book,” which offers readers 50 blueprints for kitchens designed by “leading architects and architectural draughtsmen of America.” They incorporate the new technology of modular, mass-produced cabinetry. To this point, kitchen storage meant free-standing furniture, simple shelves, or cabinets built on-site by a carpenter, said Brent Hull, a Texas-based builder who specializes in the history of millwork, especially in the kitchen.

1926

Architects begin applying the lens of domestic science to the kitchen, with many inspired by the work of the famed Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Her compact, sleek, function-driven “Frankfurt Kitchen” feels like a forerunner of IKEA, said Alexis Barr, an expert in kitchen design history at the New York School of Interior Design.

“She’s actually labeling some of those drawers, so it’s sort of set out for the homeowner, like, “This is where you’re going to put your flour; this is where you’re going to put your bread,’” Ms. Barr said. “And she’s integrating that fitted kitchen and the components of it. And it’s all sort of predicated around the idea that you’re going to have this certain set of appliances.”

American kitchens are also becoming more practically designed, with an ideal number of steps between the stove, sink and counters. Designers at the University of Illinois School of Architecture would refine this concept in the 1940s as a “work triangle,” a term still used by kitchen designers today.

1934

Kitchens are evolving, but most are still closed off from the rest of the home. Enter Frank Lloyd Wright, who designs what many believe to be the first open-concept kitchen for Malcolm and Nancy Willey, a middle-class couple in Minneapolis. Mrs. Willey wanted to cook and entertain at the same time, decades before the arrival of the open floor plan. The resulting room is still economical in terms of space and movement, but also sunlit and beautiful, connected by a half-wall and handsome picture windows to the home’s living spaces.

1945

A rush of home-building and suburbanization emerges after World War II, as does the use of more processed design materials perfected in military applications. The company that makes Formica, for example, expands its line of kitchen countertops with new patterns and colors. Plywood manufacturing takes off.

Showing off our new purchases — “look at the latest convenience, look at my new stove” — becomes increasingly chic, said Mr. Hull. As a result, “the kitchen really transforms after 1950 into much more of a modern space.”

“Just look under ‘plastics’ in the yellow-pages of your phone book for a nearby Formica fabricator. You can have beautiful Formica in your kitchen for only a few dollars a month.” 1956 advertisement

1957

Amana unveils a bottom-freezer refrigerator, so owners no longer have to crouch all the way down to reach their produce drawers. The appliance brand, now owned by Whirlpool Corporation, had also invented the side-by-side refrigerator 10 years before. The new designs lead to new features, like through-the-door ice machines and French doors.

To this point, all fridges had come with the freezer on top, the simplest way to design a refrigerator, said Barry Burkan, a refrigerator expert and a dean at Apex Technical School in New York City. Top-freezer refrigerators benefit from warm air rising up to the freezer, where it gets cooled before sinking back down to cool the refrigerator. Move the freezer to the bottom or to the side, and things get more complicated.

1963

Julia Child’s first TV show, “The French Chef,” introduces millions of Americans to French cooking, but also to her large, open, well-equipped, semiprofessional kitchen — including a massive Garland gas range, a peg board and Le Creuset pots and pans, all of which are now on view at the Smithsonian. Viewers don’t just want to cook like her, they want to own the products they see her use onscreen.

The show becomes such a fixture in the American imagination that it is still being parodied 15 years later by a bloody Dan Aykroyd on “Saturday Night Live.”

1978

General Electric Company manufactures an over-the-range microwave oven, freeing up counter space. It quickly becomes the visual centerpiece of many American kitchens.

“Microwaves had gotten more and more popular, but everyone noticed they had gotten bigger and bigger, and taking up more and more counter space.” Jim Hoetker, a former industrial designer at G.E.

1983

What do personal computers have to do with kitchens? They become a regular presence in the “the command center,” the new kitchen-home-office combination sweeping the country, said Lauren Tolles, who founded the Michigan custom cabinetry company Maison Birmingham.

“Back then, you would have had your landline sitting on it. You would have a stack of mail, the kids’ homework,” Ms. Tolles said. “The concept was successful, because the mom didn’t have to be out of the kitchen and away from her family anywhere.”

1990

As suburbs and houses continue to grow, the term “McMansions” makes its way into the vernacular. Kitchens, a practical space up through the 1950s, morph into a “decorative space,” said Mr. Hull. Cabinets grow more luxurious, ceilings grow taller, and stoves with braggable brand names like Viking or Wolf become more mainstream. “That’s really when it becomes kind of the most expensive room in the house,” he said.

1999

The Manhattan restaurant Pastis, designed by Ian McPheely and the restaurateur Keith McNally, is slathered wall-to-wall in reclaimed, glazed white subway tiles. The tiles are there (and in subways) because they’re extremely durable, easy to apply in many patterns, and easy to clean, said Mr. McPheely, now a director at Paisley Design in New York City. But they also strike an emotional chord, one reason they are now ubiquitous in American kitchens: “It gives you an instant kind of sense of history,” he said.

2005

New homes with the most up-to-date kitchen plans — large, open to the rest of the home, and increasingly central — are emerging across the country, at the tail end of a housing building boom that began in the late 1990s.

“All of a sudden, it was like this open-concept kitchen where you just had, like, literally one room,” said Aurora Farewell, whose eponymous architecture and interior design firm is based in Connecticut. Even with renovations to older homes, she said, “almost always it’s a conversation about, ‘How do you make that kitchen feel central?’”

2011

“The Property Brothers” reality show, starring Jonathan and Drew Scott, becomes a breakout success for HGTV. The show, along with the advent of social media and affordable home-furnishing retailers like IKEA, has a huge impact on home renovations.

“They’ve really made design and kind of D.I.Y. projects accessible to the masses,” said Ms. Tolles. “And there’s so much information out there on TV, on the internet. You walk into the IKEA store, they have planners. They do make it easy to do.”

“Showing them that you can make a beautiful dream home well within your budget, you don’t always have to get a turnkey ready place — that’s the biggest thing about our show that people love.” Drew Scott, co-host of “Property Brothers,” September 2011

2012

Imported cabinets made from lighter-weight, affordable engineered wood — flat-packed and shipped ready to assemble — are taking off in the U.S. “The quality of a lot of those are not that great, but the price point is so reasonable,” said Ms. Viola. “If you watch any of those HGTV shows and you see someone that says, ‘Yeah, well, we got this complete kitchen done for $10,000,’ you know it’s because they spent $1,000 on that flat-pack cabinetry that’s going to last maybe a year.”

2016

The Japanese clutter consultant Marie Kondo is so popular that her name becomes a verb. Across the country, companies that focus on organizing emerge to help us deal with the storage of too much stuff — one consequence of a kitchen that’s open to the rest of the house, said Ms. Tolles: “In a small house, it’s nice to have that openness. But then you literally have just lost like an entire wall of storage.”

2020

As Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns begin in March, Americans are working from home, often in the kitchen. Children attend school online, often in the kitchen.

“It really was during Covid that people realized that the open concept is loud,” said Sarah Snouffer, the founder of Third Street Architecture in Washington, D.C. “It’s hard to find enough space. It’s hard to have multiple people working or learning in the same space.”

“My kids are now teenagers, and with quarantine home-schooling in full effect, we’re once again all sitting around the same table at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with fate dishing out extra portions of frayed nerves and financial uncertainty.” Hugh Garvey, Sunset Magazine, April 2020

2023

The pandemic is easing, but pressure on usable space in the kitchen remains high. Shopping and cooking habits change, said Wendy Trunz, a partner in the New York City home organization company Jane’s Addiction. More people are buying in bulk and cooking at home. And many still don’t go to an office. “Some never really went back because they didn’t have to, and they kind of took over a little part of the kitchen, or a part of a dining room,” said Ms. Trunz.

2025

Kitchen designers are adapting, with warmer, more comfortable designs replacing sleek and streamlined. Kitchen islands expand, or multiply, as people want flexible all-day seating and places to plug in laptops and stash more cooking appliances and servingware.

Ms. Farewell is creating more privacy without closing off the room completely, through additions like pocket doors or framed openings that provide a sense of a separation as needed. “I do not necessarily think that the kitchen of the future, or necessarily even the kitchen of today, is an open kitchen,” she said.