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#2 is pretty cool. A porch off every bedroom - screened in - would be pretty awesome.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. All four have a large front porch, presumably a place to hang out and visit with passers-by. All four have a big dining room, bigger than the kitchen. Houses 1 and 2 also have a breakfast room. The concept of eat-in kitchen didn’t exist. For that matter, the concept of “open floor plan” clearly didn’t exist.
ReplyDeleteHouses 1,2 and 4 have a screen porch so small as to be useless, functioning only as a hallway (and in house 1 as a place for trays, whatever that means). In houses 2 and 4 you have to go through the screen porch to get to the toilet – good luck with that if you live in Minnesota and it’s 10 degrees below zero. From that, and the fact that houses 1 and 3 have no stairs to the basement, I conclude that all four of these designs are for warm climates only (houses in cold climates always have basements). House 3 also has a more sizable screen porch off of the bedroom. Maybe it’s intended as a “sleeping porch”, which people used to use in the South before air conditioning when it was too hot to sleep indoors.
House 1 has bizarrely shaped closets. House 2 has a bizarre stairway configuration that requires you to go up three steps and then down three steps to get into the kitchen. House 4 shows the kitchen appliances, and there’s no refrigerator – of course, these designs were pre-refrigerator. There is apparently an icebox inconveniently placed on the screen porch, as well as “tubs” that I’m guessing were for doing laundry (these designs were also pre-washing machine).
An interesting glimpse into a bygone era.
-Larry
Larry - I like to examine floor plans, but your inspection was very detailed. I can explain a couple of things that you brought up. Plan 3 mentions the cost does not include a cellar, so that would have been extra. Plan 2 show stairs to a basement through a door in the kitchen. As for the odd stair arrangement in that same plan, I've been in houses with that style. It's so someone coming down for breakfast can go directly to the kitchen. Or, they can go directly into the front hall when they leave the house. That whole staircase is very tight, not only horizontally, but vertically too. I cannot image the thought process that went into that.
ReplyDeleteMany stairs, back then, tended to be "space efficient". As in "narrow and steep", compared to what came later. More utilitarian than anything else.
ReplyDeleteLove these! Thanks for posting them!
ReplyDeleteLove the first two houses. Great design. These blueprints you keep sharing fascinate me.
ReplyDeleteAnon@8:37pm - True.
ReplyDeleteMark - You're welcome.
Rick, for some reason the plans caught my eye and I spent way too much time on them. At first I noticed the weird closets in house 1; then I saw the toilets that you had to go outdoors to reach in houses 2 and 4. I know that plan 3 said the cost did not include a cellar or "heating plant", i.e. furnace. So, yes, you could build a cellar, with no stairway to get to it, but obviously the design is for a warm climate; otherwise the cellar and furnace would not be optional. Likewise, house 1 has no cellar or furnace room. I know that houses 2 and 4 have cellar stairs, but they also require you to go outside to reach the toilet, which no one in their right mind would design for a cold-weather climate. Thus, all 4 houses are warm-climate designs.
ReplyDeleteI still contend that the stairs in house 2 are bizarre. If the stair configuration on the first floor matched what's shown on the second floor, there would be a hallway with no steps from the front hall to the kitchen, and someone coming down for breakfast could still go directly into the kitchen or the front hall. But then there would be no room for a coat closet under the stairs, which I think is what motivated the staircase design. I could also mention that the stairway to the basement in house 2 has only 9 steps instead of the standard 12 steps between floors, which would mean the basement ceiling is only about 6 feet high.
I think these designs are fascinating for what they tell us was important to people at the time, for example, a huge dining room. Kitchen? Not so important.
Larry - I always find old plans fascinating as well. And new plans, for that matter.
ReplyDelete