Subtitle: House Plans, Model Homes & House Articles from Harper's, Scribner's, Godey's Lady's, &c. 1850-1900.
The first floorplan shown points up the pre-industrial condition of labor being cheaper than material:
This neat little dwelling contains only one large room or kitchen,a; a small bed-room, b; and a store closet, c. The servant is supposed to sleep in the kitchen [...]
The servant's bed takes up probably a fifth of the kitchen; the 'small bed-room' is barely twice the size of its bed. Saved on heating, I'm sure.
Were the readers of Godey's Lady's Book building small cottages for themselves, or their servants; or looking at plans for them to increase by contrast the pleasure in "A Small Villa, For A Gentleman Much Attached to Gardening"?
It is nice to have the context for and 's 1860s articles on rational, honorable, domestic industry, the Christian rescue of woman's profession. Clearly doomed, basically; the intermediate article on thrift, with its daily rations costed out to the penny (onions by the bushel, a Philharmonic and library subscription, servant hire; no annual budget attempted at the servant's wage) is soon drowned out by contrivances to keep up with the Joneses while decrying the (inaccessible and ) overelaborate Jones-Smiths.
The Beecher & Stowe article does fore-run Ikea, etc., by its cunning double-use furniture allowing a family to live a respectable Victorian life in a house of two rooms and a connecting kitchen. I wonder if actual people ever had a piano and two conservatories before building a bedroom with a door. If so, no wonder they wanted a sliding storage wall to screen off the bed, though I can't believe that pasting ornamental paper on it ever made it look better than makeshift.
ISBN: 0971733716
So wrote clew in History (19th c.). | TrackBack