Three elements color, materials and accessories – can take a kitchen out of the workaday class and into the realm of leisure living. When Dr. and Mrs. Goddard Du Bois remodeled a kitchen, porch, pantry and closets into one big room for cooking, family activities and informal parties, they chose a sophisticated color scheme of blue, white and black. It is carried out in two versions. In the kitchen emphasis is on white and black: white for the ceiling, countertops and the wood cabinets above the counter, black for those below. Blue curtains and blue glass are the color accents. Beyond the cooking island, the scheme is reversed. The ceiling is painted blue, bench and banquette are upholstered in blue plastic, the curtains are blue-and-white. Black dining chairs, white globe-shaped lighting fixtures, white-topped table are the accents. Warmth and bright color come from mahogany paneling, a copy of modern painting, a garden view. A black-spattered white vinyl floor links the two areas.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | August 1959

Although in recent years color has held the center of the stage, the white kitchen is coming back into style but with a difference. If you would like a white kitchen but recall with a shudder the grimly clinical "laboratory kitchens" of the modernistic Twenties and Thirties, take heart. White is a wonderful background if you know how to use it. Because it contains all the shades in the spectrum and is the closest approximation to light, it has an affinity for all colors. Food and accessories become more inviting against white, which sets them off as a mat sets off a painting, and they in turn help to relieve it by reflection. (For instance, an orange ceiling makes a white kitchen seem warm and sunny.) White lends itself to many different effects and enables you to change color schemes at will by a switch of accessories. Designer Valerian S. Rybar combined white in cabinets and equipment with cool blues and hot red-orange tones to make his kitchen, opposite, a decorative setting for informal entertaining. It also is thoroughly practical, for everything is easily cleaned.

White kitchen is enlivened by an ingenious mingling of the cool and warm tones of the spectrum. Blue glass mosaic mural with colorful Italian larder motifs is echoed in striped curtains, orange bulletin board and blue tile floor, with subtle color in the all-over blue and green design on white plastic countertops. In the adjoining pantry, left, a bright blue wall with brass clock carries through the dominant color. Here, fold-away cooking units and a dishwasher provide a supplementary work area. The kitchen cooking center is separated from the dining area (used for after-theatre suppers) by a heat-resistant curved glass screen which blocks noise and cooking odors. The wood-and-marble-topped work cabinet, raised on legs to give lightness to the design, also acts as a buffet for informal parties. Cabinets and sinks by St. Charles. Refrigerator, dishwasher, cooking tops and built-in ovens by Frigidaire. Panelyte countertops by St. Regis. Amtico vinyl tile floor.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | February 1958

Ingenuity can often substitute for money in today's kitchen planning. An unconventional design carried out in budget-priced materials produced this kitchen, a self-contained cooking and serving citadel that is the hub of a big modern living room. Structurally, this is a straightforward carpentry job that could be duplicated in other materials, either expensive or inexpensive. The walls are ash plywood attached to wood studding and the cabinets are birch plywood. Walls and cabinets were given a satin finish: a coat of 50 per cent white lead and 50 per cent turpentine rubbed down after 24 hours with a rag dipped in linseed oil. The circular countertop was custom-cut from a sheet of Formica. Vinyl tile covers the floor.

 The equipment is arranged so that the large pieces, refrigerator and wall oven, are at the flattened ends of the arc and the smaller appliances are fitted into the more confined space in between (a point to allow for when planning a circular kitchen). This floor plan saves on materials and makes it easier to prepare meals and serve them indoors or on the terrace (reached by a door opposite the open end of the kitchen). Two ceiling spotlights and strip lights over work surfaces illuminate the kitchen. Flame was chosen as an interior color because it goes well with soft wood tones and provides a surprise element of stimulating color when the pass-throughs are opened for meals.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | September 1956

Kitchen has connected areas for laundry, bulk storage, cooking and eating. Washer-dryer is beyond sink area. Large freezer, broom closet and case-goods storage are in a walk-in closet behind wall ovens. Pans are kept in two-way cabinets between ovens and sink. The breakfast corner in foreground has a grill built into the counter-top. Sliding glass panels beneath hanging china cabinet permit serving to terrace.

Breakfast corner extends the kitchen counter space and links it to the living and dining rooms. The tiled counter zigzags around the wall, ends beneath two-way storage cabinets and pass-through which serve the dining room. Living room and breakfast corner share a two-way fireplace, pass-through bar and sink. Wood, glasses and liquor are stored by the bar.

Cooking center  is arranged in a wide bay with a triangular island to keep it free from busy traffic. Sink with disposal is next to refrigerator. Counter has a big built-in chopping block.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | February 1956

A custom-built cooking island stands at one end of living-dining room. The owner planned the details of the island and the cleanup area (where food is stored and dishes washed behind concealing doors). "I used lessons I learned from time and motion studies to save work." he says. "You don't have to move a step to talk to anyone and everything is at hand." 

Detachable hood is hung over grill before broiling steaks. It fastens to stain- less steel vent above cooking island which expels smoke and odors from both the grill and countertop burners through floor duct. 

Built-in stove unit supplements the charcoal grill in food preparation. In the fore- ground is a part of the chopping block. The entire unit is planned for serving either a swimming party lunch or elaborate dinner.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | February 1956

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