It’s the 1950s. The war is over, and the United States is enjoying a wave of unprecedented prosperity. Millions of GIs returned, eager for the comforts of home that they had been missing, and everyone settled down to a kind of nationwide nesting. Record numbers of homes were being built in the newly developed suburbs, and the center of all those homes was the kitchen.
The new, modern American kitchen took the form that had been established at the Bauhaus way back in the 1920s — built-in cabinets, with a long, continuous countertop above, and appliances integrated into the cabinets for a seamless look. People who couldn’t afford to buy a new house, or to replace their kitchen all in one go, were encourage to modernize their kitchen bit by bit, replacing their old piecemeal kitchens with new, modern cabinetry — starting with the sink unit.
By the 1940s, refrigerators had become a common feature in American kitchens. Appliance designers in the 1950s experimented with some refrigerator designs that might seem rather unusual to us now, like the 1952 GE wall-mounted version, which replaced a section of upper cabinets. The pink unit above, grandly titled the ‘GE Refrigeration Center’, combined a wall-mounted fridge with pull-out refrigerator (or freezer) drawers that were designed to match the rest of the cabinets.
Steel kitchen kitchen cabinets were very common in the 1950s, as manufacturers looked for ways to turn steel factories that produced weapons for the war to more domestic purposes. There were quite a few different manufacturers, including GE, who made both appliances and cabinets. GE also made the “cabinettes” you see above — little tiny metal cabinets made to mount under an upper cabinet (or on the backsplash).
Throughout the 1950s, designers and homeowners embraced color in the kitchen, although these colors were softer than the ones commonly seen in 1930s and 1940s kitchens. While kitchens in the 1930s and 1940s often featured bolder colors like black, red, or green, the 1950s was dominated by soft shades of blue, pink, and yellow — candy-colored cabinets with appliances to match.
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| 1951 Western Style Youngstown Kitchen – This modern kitchen shows the steel cabinetry so popular during the post-WWII period as well as the prevalence of the Western theme with the knotty pine walls and yoke light fixture in the adjacent breakfast booth. |
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| 1951 Armstrong Picture Kitchen – In addition to the flooring, this kitchen is visually active with cupboard doors that serve as cooking inspiration. The idea was to introduce low-cost design with inexpensive materials … in this case pages from magazines. |
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| 1951 Early American Kitchen – One of the design trends of the early 1950s was wallpaper. Not only was wallpaper used abundantly throughout the house, but ceiling treatments were common in the magazines of the period. How many homeowners actually undertook the daunting task of doing this themselves is anybody’s guess, but it looks like a heck of a lot of work to us. |
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| 1953 Armstrong Kitchen – This kitchen has tons of storage … a common feature in Armstrong linoleum ads. Other common trends included the modern light fixtures and pinch pleated café curtains. |
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| 1953 Brown & Green Kitchen – This modern mid-century kitchen has a brown, orange, and apple green scheme, and an eat in kitchen. Wallpaper was a common wall treatment and during the early 1950s was often used on the ceiling as well. |
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