Mr. and Mrs. Samuel W. Foster of El Centro, California, might well have reversed the old saw, 'a little kitchen makes a large house.' Since the kitchen you see opposite was the first part of their house to be built, the Fosters literally lived in it for several years while construction continued. Today Mr. and Mrs. Foster and their three small children are as likely to gather for a barbecue or to grill steaks at the kitchen fireplace as they are to sit down around the dining table, and little wonder. The Fosters' kitchen has a cheerful open fireplace, a banquette that would be appropriate in a living room, year-round air conditioning, and a decorating scheme as tantalizing as the Mexican tamales that are often prepared here.
So that many cooks could work here without confusion, architect Burton Schutt neatly divided the kitchen into four centers for dining, cooking, food preparation, and washing up. While fireplace chefs turn the meat, another member of the party can prepare vegetables and a salad without ever crossing paths. Since several members of the family frequently do want to cook at the same time, the Fosters consider duplicate equipment more a matter of necessity than luxury. For this reason, eight countertop burners were installed in a peninsula near the center of the kitchen. Two nearby wall ovens let the cook watch several operations at the same time. There are also three sinks, plus a dishwasher, so that many activities dovetail but never overlap. Although the Fosters cook exactly in the center of their kitchen, odors are immediately drawn off by two fans in a hood over the burners. This hood also conceals spotlights that beam light down on the cooking surface to supplement soft illumination produced by nearly 90 white Christmas tree bulbs in a freeform ceiling cove.
Because of the extremes in temperature along the California- Mexico border, the Fosters kitchen fireplace was not just a happy impulse. It is actually used for extra heating on cool summer evenings and in winter. To prevent warping in the extreme hot- to-cold climate, kitchen cabinets are made of thick plywood. In the summer, the kitchen, two maids' rooms, and a service porch (used as laundry room and for the freezer) are kept pleasantly cool by a three-ton air conditioner. Part of the charm of the Fosters' kitchen is that it blends in so compatibly with its surroundings. All of the colors are taken from citrus fruits and Mexican tamales, as familiar to the Imperial Valley as are the desert plants and wide sweep of alfalfa visible through the kitchen windows.
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source: House and Garden Magazine | September 1953
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