1943, Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company designs the kitchen of tomorrow

12/11/2022 12:13:00 AM

Designed for pot-walloping, today's kitchen is cooped up. But tomorrow's, with inclosed sink, huge windows, and finish harmonized with rest of house, is larger, lighter, more open. Wall between it and living-room slides back, makes study, game room, or buffet bar.

Today's hodgepodge of equipment gives way to continuous counter with everything built in, handier to use and quick to wipe clean. At extreme left is the oven; next, opened up, the cooking unit; next, closed into the counter so you don't see it, the mixer and juicer; then storage bins, pretty girl at sink, and more storage bins rounding the corner to the refrigerator with china cabinet above.

Set high. the no-stoop, no-squat, full-vision, toughened glass oven is also a big pancake or pan-frying griddle. You roll front back, slip griddle from oven base into place, then fry wide and handsome. The glass hood shields you and the kitchen, too, from hot, flying grease.

Range, too, is revolutionary. Toaster, pressure cooker, and glass "pots," recessed along the back, seal the heat in. With the insulated counter top closed, each pot is virtually a fireless cooker. Cooked foods are lifted in their containers into serving wagon shown below

Lights built into sink and range covers illuminate work when covers are open. Foot or knee controls open and close faucets, leave hands free. Counter design lets you sit comfortably close, feet beneath. Vegetable drawer drops when opened, rolls food forward in easy reach

The serving wagon is a portable cupboard holding regularly used china, silver, and linen. Closed, it nestles beside the oven. For dinner, you lift cooking vessels from the range into wagon's warming compartment, roll the wagon to table, set table, and serve from the cooking vessels. Saves endless steps and dishwashing.

Built into the range is a waffle iron. With smooth plates inserted, it's a sandwich grill. Or the lower half can be fitted with griddle for small frying jobs. Under the round covers at each side of the waffle iron are wells for heating precooked foods in their own containers to save pot washing. Vessels along rear are 1-, 1 1/2-, 2-quart sizes, designed so that heat can filter up under their covers to bake small quantities which don't justify heating whole oven.

Knives, cooking spoons, and so on are kept handy and safely in hinged panels which close up under the wall cabinet. Cabinet doors—of fluted glass to let you see where things are inside but not so clearly as to expose disorder slide back safely rather than swing out to crack your head. Daylight floods softly into the kitchen thru the translucent insulating-glass wall. And the plateglass window across the kitchen's end brings the outdoors intimately close

Like barbecued meat? Here you see the oven with its removable, electrically turned spit inserted to barbecue a chicken. To cook various sizes of meat, the heating element can be raised or lowered and the sides turned up. It can also be raised so only the top half of the oven is heated for a small baking job. Like the glass wall, like the refrigerator's sliding doors, the oven is a new type of double-paned glass with sealed space between, like a vacuum bottle. This blocks heat loss, keeps kitchen cool

Building in all appliances ends the vast annoyance of disorder of toasters, juicers, mixers, choppers, and the like strewn along the counter or inextricably tangled in the cupboards with roasters, garden seeds, cake tins, and old baseball bats. In tomorrow's kitchen you lift the counter top beside the range and swing the unit upward, attaching the mixer. When you want to chop food, the mixer slides back into a pocket and the chopper replaces it. Ditto the juicer. All operate on the same motor-driven unit

To free the dining alcove for living space, the glass-topped table folds up, becomes a decorative mural. The colorful wall is glass, too, and boasts a lifetime finish easily cleaned with a damp cloth. Refrigerator (lower left) opens into both kitchen and dining alcove, has four times the capacity of today's average home refrigerator, and is divided into a series of compartments to hold each food, from frozen meats to lettuce, at ideal cold and humidity

Large windows of insulating glass assure you of a brighter, fresher, more spacious house tomorrow. The multi-paned windows with metal-sealed air-space between panes give storm-sash insulation, remain in place all year. Projecting roof blocks out high summer sun and yet allows winter sun, lower in the sky, to enter and heat the rooms. Experimental houses have been heated from 9:30 a. m. to 5 p. m. by the sun alone even with 8 below zero outside