Today conveniences like double sinks and dishwashers are considered standard in most new homes. But in 1959 such amenities were still a novelty, at least until House Beautiful presented its Pace Setter House for that year. Readers already anxious about keeping up with the Joneses were confronted with a centrally located 30-by-12-foot kitchen outfitted with the aforementioned sinks and dishwasher as well as laundry facilities, two ovens, a “utility center,” a disposal, a bar, and a mixing area. The house, which featured an avocado-and-teal color scheme, also had an indoor swimming pool with a glass roof; the magazine helpfully noted that the den could also serve as a guest room, office, or cabana.
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“In retrospect it seems so ridiculous to have an indoor pool and a kitchen full of every convenience and make the claim that it was the typical American home,” says Kristin Fedders, who came across the prototype while researching homes from that era as part of her graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “The magazine pretends this is a house anyone could afford, when in fact it was not. They made spaces for everything, simply because they had everything, such as the flower-arranging sink. Even in a house like that I can’t think flower arranging was an overwhelming priority.”
It was also the height of the cold war and the year that Vice President Richard Nixon made a trip to Moscow to meet with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. The two exchanged political rhetoric in an impromptu debate while standing in a model of a well-appointed kitchen at the 1959 American National Exhibition. During the “kitchen debate” the two leaders couched an argument over political systems in a discussion about household appliances.
Fedders, whose vintage Lakeview home has a pint-size kitchen and few amenities, will give a slide presentation entitled “Conservatism, Consumerism, Cold War, Kitchens, and Khrushchev: The House Beautiful Pace Setter House for 1959” Thursday at the Graham Foundation, 4 W. Burton Place. There’s a reception at 6; the talk begins at 6:30. Admission is $5. Call 312-443-3949.
