Never has a whole country spent so much money on so many expensive things in such an easy way as Americans are doing today.
Fortune magazine, October 1956
IN 1955 the United States economy had a record gross national product that topped $400 billion, due to a great extent to American consumers having spent some $247 billion during the year. Luxurious household items, once the preserve of the wealthy, had come within reach of the middle classes thanks to modern assembly-line production and easily obtainable credit. Much of the spending was on kitchen appliances purchased in the new out-of-town discount stores. Consumers were constantly exhorted by advertisements in home magazines and on television to replace their old appliances with bigger and better models, thus ensuring that sales would never reach saturation point. Shopping became not only the new American pastime but also, according to Brides magazine’s “Handbook for Newlyweds,” a patriotic duty: “When you buy dozens of things you never bought or thought of before, you are helping to build greater security for the industries of this country. What you buy and how you buy it is very vital in your new life – and to our whole American way of living.”
One of the largest home purchases was the refrigerator. Nearly every home in America had one. Fortune magazine reported in 1955 that consumers spent $1.3 billion buying four million new refrigerators. Refrigerators not only increased in size during the 1950s to incorporate enormous freezers, but during the early years of the decade they became more decorative and colorful, often rivaling the cars in the driveway for decorative chrome trim and variety of color.
Clothes dryers and dishwashers were initially a more difficult sell. Research showed that women did not consider them strictly necessary and felt themselves rather lazy for using them. They also feared that if kitchens became too automated, husbands might question as to whether they needed wives at all. Refrigerators and freezers, on the other hand, were considered necessities as they ensured that there was always plenty of food in the house.
A refrigerator with green and gold interior. Colors and extraneous decoration on household appliances were inspired by car designs of the period, 1954.
The mother of the bride extols the virtues of a large cooking range as an important ingredient for a successful marriage in this 1951 advertisement.
“To every suffering male who has to do the dishes.” One of a series of dishwasher advertisements aimed directly at men, 1951.
In the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, the domestic focus of the middle-class house was the parlor. The kitchen was clearly separated from other rooms, at the back of the house, with a separate entrance for tradesmen. Since the kitchen was usually the province of servants, design was utilitarian and there was little attempt at décor. In the postwar period the center of the home shifted to the kitchen. Servants were less affordable and women were spending more time in their kitchens. House designs changed to accommodate this new paradigm and by the 1950s the kitchen had become more fully integrated into the open-plan living areas of new homes. This allowed the housewife to participate fully in the activities of the household from her realm in the kitchen.
“The living room has moved into the kitchen, or vice versa,” wrote the architect Royal Barry Wills in 1954. “If madam is going to spend all her time in the culinary department, she doesn’t want to feel lonely, the man of the house can loll here in slippers, with pipe in his mouth.”
In Marcel Breuer’s design for MoMA’s “House in the Garden,” the kitchen, located in the middle of the rectangular plan, was to be “the control center of the home.” On one side it opened into the living room and on the other, into the utility room. A “view panel” allowed the mother to see into the playroom and adjoining yard. In the Levittown ranch houses introduced in 1949, the kitchen was moved to the front of the house so mothers could watch their children as they played on the front lawn.
Kitchens were often the most modern-looking room in the home, with their new streamlined appliances and smooth continuous lines of countertops. Articles and advertisements about the new integrated kitchens dominated home magazines, and housewives overcame their reluctance to buy dishwashers once they were discreetly integrated into the cabinetry. New kitchen designs often followed “the work triangle,” a model developed during the 1940s by home economists, where the cooking range, refrigerator and sink are in easy reach of one another, with each appliance having sufficient counter space beside it.
A fully equipped kitchen was an important marketing device for the new suburban housing developers. In Levittown, kitchens came with built-in white enamel cabinets, a refrigerator, a washing machine, venetian blinds, a stainless-steel sink with two drains, and a General Electric stove with three burners. Kitchens in the Eichler developments in California also included a dishwasher and a garbage disposal device.
Marcel Breuer’s “House in the Garden” exhibit at MoMA, showing the sliding doors of the kitchen which opened onto a dining table at one end of the living room, 1949.
The myth of the 1950s, perpetuated by popular sit-coms, was that wives effortlessly whipped up family dinners every night in their new fully equipped kitchens. In reality, the move to the suburbs from the cities often left young wives without recourse to the culinary skills and traditions of their mothers and grandmothers. To fill this need, food companies targeted suburban women with extensive advertising campaigns. The industry had developed new techniques for canned, dehydrated and frozen foods to provision the troops during the war. Their postwar aim was to persuade women to buy these new products as timesaving “heat and serve,” “quick ‘n’ easy” man-pleasing recipes.
A huge range of convenience foods could now be found in the frozen food sections and on the shelves of supermarkets. Advertisements and packaging included recipes, and cookbooks incorporated frozen, packaged, and canned ingredients into their recipes. Minute Rice, canned mushrooms or creamy chicken soup could be eaten as they were, or added to a recipe as a “shortcut.”
This advertisement for Minute Rice suggests some of the ways in which fast-cooking rice could be incorporated into speedy recipes, 1950.
A related innovation dreamt up by the food industry was the TV dinner. This was a pre-cooked dinner of meat, potato and vegetables in a tri-partite foil container, with the meat in the largest section. Pre-packaged meals had been introduced during the war as rations for pilots. They were redesigned in 1953 by Swanson and marketed for eating in front of the television.
“If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake” was the title of a no.1 hit single popular song, first published in 1950. Home baking was seen as synonymous with feminine hospitality, but many women did not have the time or the skills to create the elaborate cakes pictured in cookery books and magazines. The food industry’s solution was the cake mix. Its box contained pre-mixed dry ingredients, and the housewife had only to add water and stir to easily create a simple, foolproof cake. The cake could also be the starting point for elaborate confections. “Now, success in cake-making is packaged along with the precise ingredients,” wrote Myrna Johnson in a 1953 article in Better Homes and Gardens. “You can put your own effort into glorifying your cake with frosting, dreaming up an exciting trim that puts your own label on it.”
A typical scene of conjugal bliss, 1950s style, conjured up by the advertising industry, portrays a happy housewife in a frilly apron serving a meal to her smiling husband.
Cake manufacturers discovered that when they omitted dried eggs and had housewives add a real egg the product became easier to sell, since it gave them a sense of accomplishment (as well as a better tasting cake). Ad from 1954.
One of a series of articles by Life, featuring sumptuous dishes that required advanced culinary skills, 1952.
Despite the best efforts of the food industry to persuade women to abandon home cooking in favor of bland convenience foods, most continued to cook. The evidence for this is found in the numerous cookbooks, magazine recipes, newspaper columns and television shows dedicated to the art of traditional home cooking.
Multi-purpose living areas helped change the way people dined and socialized. Formal dinner parties with seating charts and a strict order of courses were difficult without a formal dining room and servants in the kitchen. Royal Barry Wills mourned the loss of the dining room and its “old-fashioned formality,” but he recognized that it took up too much space in a modern home. He suggested creating a dining area in the living room that was screened during eating by “a folded partition or a drapery… This is far better than the indignity of sitting on bar stools, though somewhat short of the real thing and constitutes present day arrangements in 90 percent of all houses.”
Semi-transparent split bamboo screen designed by Marcel Breuer to separate the dining area in an open-plan interior, 1954.
The buffet dinner was a popular solution for informal dining. In January 1952, Life’s article on “Flaming Food” reported that chafing dishes “are enjoying a renaissance” as “a festive way to entertain informally,” since they can be “put to honest work in maidless households.” The new affluence meant that more Americans traveled abroad and developed a taste for ethnic foods. These were reflected in the range of dishes suggested in the article, such as crepes suzettes, sukiyaki and Swiss fondue.
Trays of canapés decorated with olives and sculpted radishes were handed round at cocktail parties, as shown in this 1950 advertisement.
This 1950 advertisement shows some favorite fare for parties: tinned fruit and gelatin molds.
Informal gatherings such as the stand-up cocktail party became an important weekend social event in the suburbs. It was a way in which neighbors could become acquainted with one another and was no doubt partially responsible for the rise in consumption of gin and vodka during the period. Guests could congregate in the indoor living space or wander out through the glass doors to the patio, sipping their drinks, nibbling the finger food and chatting. Trays of crackers, chips and vegetables surrounded bowls of dips such as guacamole or cheese. Self-service canapés, which might include devilled ham, savory mushrooms, hot cheese puffs or miniature pizzas, were laid out on the coffee table or outdoors on tables on the patio.
Weber grills were first introduced in 1952, and the word “barbecue” was coined during the period to describe an outdoor buffet-style grill. Cookery writer James Beard published The Complete Book of Barbecues and Rotisserie Cooking in 1954, which became the bible of outdoor cooking. Barbecues had long been part of the social scene on the west coast, but in the 1950s they became hugely popular in the backyards of suburban homes throughout the country. The women planned and prepped the meal, but this was usually the only time the man of the house presided over the cooking.
Home barware sets “for year-round hosting and toasting … from cozy fireside twosomes to big terrace get-togethers,” 1954.
Students on the Cornell home economics course were taught the most effective ways to keep a house clean. For instance, “it is better to use a long handled mop than a short one.” Life, 1953.
