UNFOLDING HISTORY
While convertible furniture has existed in some form for centuries, hidden beds as a space-saving solution for the average apartment dweller took hold in the late 1800s.
A GOODE CABINET
In 1885, Sarah Elisabeth Goode of Chicago received a patent for a folding cabinet bed. Designed to make maximum use of space, the piece was ideal for people living in large urban centers, where rooms in small apartments had to serve several purposes. Interlocking sections folded out into a single bed. Closed, it was a desk, with nooks for papers and supplies. Goode was one of the first African American women to receive a patent. According to BlackPast.org, little is known of Goode’s life, except that both her father and her husband were carpenters, and it may have been through them that she gained her expertise in cabinetmaking.
MURPHY’S DILEMMA
The story goes that William L. Murphy devised his fold-up wall bed in the late 1890s while living in a one-room flat in San Francisco. He was courting an opera singer, and the era’s strict etiquette prohibited a lady from visiting a man’s bedroom. Our hero’s workaround was to hide his bed behind a door. Voila—all upright parlor, no unseemly boudoir. In fact, Murphy had tinkered with his invention for some time. And though his system employed ingenious mechanics (top), the concept of hiding a bed in plain sight wasn’t entirely novel. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, had an affection for recessed alcove beds, and built one at Monticello in the 1790s.
Murphy patented his design, called the Disappearing Bed, in 1911. By 1925, he relocated the Murphy Wall Bed Co. to New York, where his design still enjoys legendary status.
CASTRO CONVERTIBLES
Now regarded as the father of the modern sofa bed, Bernard Castro founded his company in 1931 in New York with $400 he’d saved as an upholsterer. Beds that folded into seaters— called davenports (below)— existed then, but they weren’t attractive or comfortable in either position. Castro’s genius was in crafting foldouts that were beautiful and functional. A devotee of interior design, he set up showrooms highlighting the latest decor trends. Castro patented several convertible mechanisms and was an early adopter of TV advertising. Beginning in the late 1940s, his daughter Bernadette appeared in commercials opening a Castro couch, with the tagline “so easy, even a child can do it.”
“One of the most adventurous things left is to go to bed.” E.V. LUCAS, ENGLISH ESSAYIST