Today, life in the average household with young children revolves around the kitchen. So the logical place for the kitchen is right in the center of the house. An outstanding example of this kind of planning is shown here: the kitchen is a center island between living room and family room. It is closed off from the living room, but opens to the family room over a table-height snack bar which can double for children's projects in- volving crayons and modeling clay. Besides this ingenious arrangement, the house has several other good ideas worth studying. The carport doubles as a covered entrance walk. There is a big storage room at the back of the carport to supplement closets inside the house. (This is less costly to build than such storage space inside the house.) The house is planned so that children can go in and out of their own rooms through the family room. (They can also be persuaded to make a habit of washing their hands, since a lavatory opens off it.) At $16,950 with air conditioning (or $16.260 without), this is a bargain house for in- formal living. It is one of a group of houses planned for young families, and built in Merrifield. Virginia, a suburban development near Washington, D. C. This new kind of real estate development leaves the trees standing. Lots are big enough (half-acre) to enjoy privacy outdoors. This gives each family the feeling that its home is not con- fined within the four walls of the house.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | September 1954

Unlike the ready-built house, which must be planned to suit the average family (and average needs), the custom-built house sums up the tastes and particular way of living of its owners. This one, which belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Edward J. Ledder Jr., of Lake Forest, Illinois, is a good example of a house built to the specifications of the owners.

The Ledders are interested in traditional architecture. This can be readily seen on all sides of their one-story Georgian house. It is shrimp brick, set off by a slate blue door and white trim. The approach is through a delightfully landscaped garden and bluestone-paved terrace designed around a pair of stone statues. The recessed, double front door has traditional paneling, Colonial hardware. On either side of it are large floor-to- ceiling bay windows. At the rear, a screened porch is enhanced by New Orleans iron work. Inside, this house has what few small houses have today: i.e., a separate dining room, which is what the Ledders specified. Also planned as part of the house is the screened porch, strategically placed so it can be reached directly from both kitchen and living room. It is used for buffet suppers and cocktail parties in warm weather. The final result is a house easy to run with only part-time help, but which at the same time lends itself to large-scale entertaining.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | September 1954

In suburban St. Louis, on the two broad terraces that double the size of this small house, summer is a season that lasts eight months. The house, which belongs to Mr. William A. Bernoudy, shows how nature can be prodded to bestow southern California favors on the mid-west. It also shows how a compact plan and easy-upkeep materials (cork and tile floors, for example) make for carefree living. The combination leaves the owner with no doubts about where he wants to spend the summer: at home.

Since Mr. Bernoudy planned the house just for himself and his mother, it is smaller than many a vacation house, with only a living-dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and two baths, plus the brick-paved terraces. These terraces follow the sun and the seasons. The south terrace is always sunny, always protected from the north winds, and can be used even in early spring and late fall. (It seems a part of the living room, is divided from it only by floor-to-ceiling glass doors which catch the prevailing summer breezes.) The west terrace is shielded from sun and showers by a 12-foot cantilevered roof, and is a pleasant spot for buffet lunches during the hot summer months. Besides the terraces for outdoor living and entertaining, there is an extra delight and final reason for spending summer at home: a small decorative pool for frequent dips.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | June 1954

Like most creative people who have a sense of the dramatic, artist Jon Whitcomb is a good host and one who sets the stage well. His house in Darien, Connecticut, has all the necessary props, plus a few non-essentials which certainly add to the fun. (The lighting includes uplights and downlights, dim lights and spot lights and even colored lights.) It is also a house ready at all times for guests, in spite of the fact that Mr. Whitcomb works at home, frequently far into the night to meet magazine cover deadlines. The present house, built around a small week-end cottage, has a plan carefully tailored to the owner's work-and-play kind of life. Guests can be put up overnight. A party can be going on in the playroom, living room, or adjoining terrace, with- out in any way disturbing the quiet isolation of Mr. Whitcomb's studio. For a hospitable man with an unpredictable work schedule, such an arrangement is absolutely necessary.

To stage-set the house for parties is an easy matter. Outside, there are portable floodlights to play up a corner of the terrace, or black out a flowering shrub past its prime. In the living-dining room, there are spotlights in the ceiling above the dining table, pink and white lights in the bar recess, a blue spotlight above the piano keyboard, another spot above the radio-record player. The exceptional studio lighting is a necessity for Mr. Whitcomb's work and a glamour asset for parties. In both living room and studio, there are master switches to control the lighting pat- terns, and rheostats to regulate brightness.

The main entertaining area is the huge, L- shaped living-dining room. Glass window-walls in the L bring the adjoining terrace right inside. At one end of the living room is a music center with grand piano and organ. At the opposite end is the fireplace, flanked by two sofas. Next to the fireplace is a built-in radio-record player. Built into another wall, behind sliding doors, is the bar sink and shelves for glasses and liquor bottles, the latter stored horizontally, each in a cardboard mailing tube. The bar proper, of chestnut with black plastic top, is on rollers so it can be moved easily. The flooring is beige rubber tile except in this area, which is marked off by black tile. The bar and fireplace walls are bleached chestnut; wall behind organ is chestnut paneling, holds bookshelves.

The downstairs playroom is gay and rugged, and obviously belongs to an artist. Mr. Whit- comb's collection of art by well-known illustrators is all around you. One wall is of pegboard painted red; the sofa is upholstered in bright green felt.

When it is used for entertaining, the studio has strictly professional music and sound effects. The high-fidelity music system has a tone of concert- hall caliber, with speakers placed so music can be enjoyed both in the studio and on the adjoining screened porch. The movie projector is set into a mirrored wall recess, and the screen pulls down over the window-wall opposite.

But the studio is mainly Mr. Whitcomb's place to work, and as such is a complete unit with adjoining secretary's office. It opens to the porch and to a secluded terrace where he likes to step out for a break on working days, and to his own bedroom and bath-dressing room. On week ends when three bedrooms are needed for guests, Mr. Whitcomb sleeps in his studio on a pull-out bed which serves as a couch by day.

One guest room and bath is located on the main floor, the other on the lower level next to the playroom. These are furnished to double as sitting rooms, with sofas, television, and comfortable reading and writing spots. Since they are frequently used by models, the bathrooms are carefully lighted for making-up. One has a pink-and- red color scheme: three walls are papered in a small, geometric red-and-white pattern, and the fourth covered in pink pegboard; the flooring is red-and-white marbleized asphalt tile.

Throughout the house are evidences of the owner's three strongest beliefs about how to make a house livable: (1) music of superb tone; (2) furniture on rollers, so it can be easily rearranged; (3) lighting for mood and for fun as well as for working. Mr. Whitcomb also is a great believer in flexibility, and sees no reason why rooms shouldn't adapt themselves to their owners' changing moods. After all, it's no trouble to push an eight-foot sofa if it's on rollers, and a whole room may take on a new look if you simply change a bouquet of flowers and turn a colored spotlight on it.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | December 1953

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

To Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Roberts, transitional means a growing-up kind of house, one with a past, a present, and a future. Their house in Winnetka, Illinois, looks as if it might have been copied from a picture in an old-fashioned storybook, but it lives a thoroughly modern American family life. It has been planned to grow up with the family, to suit three active youngsters now, and later adapt itself to more adult ways.

From the front, the house looks deceptively small, and traditionally picturesque. It is L-shaped, pink brick with white ornamental ironwork trim, snug and pretty and ground-hugging. In back, the house opens up to a sandy beach, and all of Lake Michigan for swimming and boating. Inside, it has two ideas of special delight to the young: a family room on the first floor for parents and children to enjoy together; and the whole upstairs for the exclusive use of the children, with a separate bedroom for each child. These ideas also work to the advantage of Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. both now and in the years to come. The family room will eventually become a gathering-spot for teen agers, and finally will be used as a library. The master suite on the first floor is a quiet oasis now, and later, when the children are away at school, will give their parents an easy-living, one-floor house.

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source: House and Garden Magazine | September 1953