Responding to the kitchen’s expanding role
BIG OR SMALL, TODAY’S KITCHEN HAS BECOME MOST HOMES’ PRE- EMINENT SPOT
It’s a cliche to say that “everyone wants to be in the kitchen.” But we do. Most households have no dedicated homemaker. Everyone works, or is constantly on their phone, or is completely over- scheduled, and the one place that we all need to be is the place that feeds us. And it’s not just food we eat, we are also nourished by companionship we can get in no other part of our homes — the kitchen.
The universal appeal of cooking, eating and being together in our kitchens was lost for a generation or two in America. After World War I, June Cleaver got a perm, did her makeup, put on an apron and you did not see her until dinner. We made homes that isolated the cook to a room behind walls, with stacked boxes of cabinets and appliances. It was a room with no place to sit unless it was at the table in the middle of it all. How things have changed...
That isolated quadrant of most homes came out of the closet when June Cleaver got a job. The universe of home living has come full circle: the kitchen came back home. We are now all around the hearth again. That the hearth is now the most expensive, the most used, and the most social place in most homes — the kitchen.
Two- hundred years ago, almost every home was also centered around the hearth, and the hearth was also the kitchen. That was before central heating, when a home had multiple fireplaces for heat and the one in the living room was, by necessity, the place where we cooked.
Something happened about 150 years ago: The way we heated and the way we cooked became separate things. We had central plumbing. We began to have separate rooms to cook in all year round: not the central hearth or a “summer kitchen” for when the heat of baking/ roasting/ stewing was unwelcome. Kitchens became a reality, with sinks, ice boxes and stoves.
Rather than just one room on the first floor, along with “dining,” “parlor” and “living,” the kitchen has become the pre- eminent place, not just for cooks, or even families. The kitchen is the focus of attention for everyone who comes into almost every home built in the last generation.
That means that kitchen design is a huge part of home design. Christine F. Ingraham co- created Fletcher
Cameron Design in New Haven with her husband, Greg Spiggle. For over 25 years, Ingraham and Spiggle have based their design and cabinet company on creating kitchens. Christine declares that “the kitchen is the brain of the home” and the center of the kitchen is now the sink: “Sinks are now four feet wide, a full work station.”
The kitchen focus is not limited to professional designers, either. Selfdescribed “former hausfrau” Eva Geertz, Director of The Institute Library, also in New Haven, is devoted to her kitchen. “The kitchen became hugely important when we had one paycheck raising our daughter, and we stopped eating out” she remembers.
Her kitchen is tiny — six feet by five feet “so it was like pulling teeth“when they renovated their kitchen five years ago, and is countertop focused. The Family Geertz settled on stainless steel countertops, despite the cost, because their use demanded the durability of steel.
While the need to eat is universal, the act of creating food is supremely idiosyncratic. Four foot wide sinks and stainless steel countertops may work for some, but others demand a nearby sofa, or Kosher segregation, or separate freezers and refrigerators. One chef I designed a kitchen for demanded that the stove be completely centered around easy- access infused oils of many types fused for wok cooking. Pot- fillers next to cooktops, prep sinks next to composting vessels and undercounter beverage refrigerators are now standard options where once they were exotic luxuries.
Our kitchens, like our homes, simply mirror our values and reflect how we live. Technology may lead innovation, but, in truth, we have all become the cooks of our kitchens, and always have been.
ONE CHEF DEMANDED THAT THE STOVE BE COMPLETELY CENTERED AROUND EASY- ACCESS INFUSED OILS OF MANY TYPES FUSED FOR WOK COOKING.