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danemodsandy

danemodsandy

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Now that I have that glorious copy of the 1953 American Kitchens New Kitchen Designs for Living brochure that I've already raved about, I am once again more than a little fascinated by the line, its purpose and its demise.

The thing I'm most struck by looking at the catalog pictures is - the incredible value the line represented to midcentury homeowners. What Raymond Loewy designed was not merely good-looking steel cabinetry - he designed a total DIY kitchen solution.

AK ads make it clear - this was a line that the homeowner could use for their own design, could self-install and could purchase over time, beginning with a basic sink unit and perhaps a few wall cabinets, and then add to the installation as finances permitted. Luxury was not only available - it was sold in a way that made it possible for a disciplined homeowner to have it paid for by the time it was all in place.

Loewy anticipated - and solved - one of the biggest problems DIY kitchen installers face: countertop installation. He made them available on a per-cabinet basis, with stock sizes to fit every base cabinet size made. If continuous countertops were preferred, those were available, too. Prefabricated corner sections made it impossible to goof up the trickiest part of counter installation too much. And if you liked, you could have a solid maple section somewhere in your design for cutting and chopping.

Cabinets were available to meet pretty much any need - bases, wall units, a pantry/utility unit, a serving cart, a breakfast bar, plant shelves and more and more and more.

What I find very interesting in all of this is - this was all so far ahead of its time, we still haven't caught up to it today. Oh, you can buy prefab cabinets anywhere. You can buy flat-pack stuff. Some of it's pretty darn nice. But you have to be fairly skilled to get a really professional-looking installation (particularly countertops), or you have to hire it done. With American Kitchens, the average homeowner capable of handling a bubble level, using a stud-finder, and wielding a screwdriver and an electric drill could install everything without recourse to pros, with the exceptions of plumbing the sink unit, disposer and dishwasher (today's more forgiving plumbing components hadn't been invented yet). And he could easily end up with a professional-looking kitchen, not the sorry "Well, I tried" look of today's klutzier DIY efforts.

I've long believed that in many ways, America was a wiser place at midcentury than it is today. Raymond Loewy's work for American Kitchens feels to me like one of those ways.

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You hit the nail on the head!

I know lots of people like todays world better, but for the most part the 50s were the high water mark of America, balanced budgets, peace, and great products, built to last, by Americans!I would go back anyday, now I know it was not the greatest time for gays, but, I would put up with being in the closet, to live in the 50s!
 
The Demise:

All good things come to an end, and American Kitchens was no exception. So far as some casual Googling can determine, the end came in '59 *, with some other upheavals at AVCO, AK's parent company. AVCO was not at all hurt by letting go of AK; their D & M division made dishwashers for - well, damn near everybody - for a long time to come, using the basic technology seen in American Kitchens dishwashers.

But what turned AK from a winner to an albatross? It appears to have been that old devil, Fashion. Consumer tastes were changing from midcentury sleek to something "homier," with many metal cabinet companies beginning to offer wood fronts.

This was a little more difficult for AK than it was for St. Charles, Youngstown and the other metal cabinet companies, because AK cabinets included a curved drawer front that did not lend itself to cladding in wood or veneer.

AK met this challenge by cladding the cabinet doors in wood, but leaving the drawer fronts metal, now in a brushed copper-plated finish. Sink tops were Coppertone instead of White. Base cabinet pulls were changed to a "period" ring pull in dark metal and countertops could be had in Ye Olde Fayke Woode Graine.

This effort appears to have been serious, not just a half-hearted "facelifting," because the photos in this post show a cooktop and oven specifically manufactured to coordinate in styling with the cabinets.

From what I've seen over the years on Craigslist, eBay, etc., these wood-fronted cabinets are pretty rare, which seems to be an indication that they were not strong sellers.

Whatever the sales figures, AVCO didn't feel AK was worth continuing - a sorry end to one of the best-designed kitchen systems ever.

* I will happily stand corrected if someone has proof of another date; these posts are musings, not a researched history of AK.

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There's one thing I don't like in AK cabinets, and it's the very, very narrow opening on the lower-level lazy Susan. It's tricky to use and impossible to clean. I don't know why they did that.
 
John:

"There's one thing I don't like in AK cabinets, and it's the very, very narrow opening on the lower-level lazy Susan. It's tricky to use and impossible to clean."

That sounds like the voice of experience speaking - do you own an AK kitchen, or have you been around one at one time?

I can readily see what you're talking about in catalog pics I have, like the one below. I would assume that Loewy's rationale for doing that was to avoid creating a true corner unit that made a wide 45-degree angle in the corner. That would have necessitated a special corner countertop unit just for that purpose. The AK system was "modular," meaning that a fairly restricted number of basic stampings were combined in different ways to create variations on the basic wall and base cabinets.

The door of the corner Lazy Susan unit appears to have been something like four to six inches wide. As you note - not especially convenient!

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I like those dark blue counters with the white cabinets. The first picture mentions "vinyl tops." Did AK have some special countertop material? I don't believe I have heard the word "vinyl" used in conjuction with countertop materials.

My parents bought a metal cabinet with a double bowl sink at Sears for the house in IL, but the two houses in GA had stick made kitchen cabinets. The ones in Decatur had the same grooving in the pine doors as the walls.
 
Tom:

The countertop material was akin to vinyl flooring, bonded to a steel substrate. It gave the appearance - and most of the performance - of the latest "miracle" material, Formica, without the on-site fabrication requirements Formica had at that time; post-formed laminate countertops were still in the future in the late '40s and early '50s.

When I say "vinyl flooring," I do not mean today's relatively soft cusnioned no-wax vinyl; I mean vinyl closer to today's VCT - vinyl composition tiles.
 
I remember my mother specifying Formica for the counters. Other kitchens had linoleum countertops. Maybe these were similar. They certainly would be cushioned and far kinder to things than granite has shown itself to be in today's kitchens. We had linoloum on the kitchen floor.
 
Tom:

Lino was rapidly passing out of favor at the time American Kitchens was a hot company. Its major drawback for countertops was a tendency to rot when exposed to repeated moisture, such as around sinks. It also stained very badly when exposed to grease.

I know a lot of people today think of Formica as totally passe and beneath their notice, but when it was introduced, it was an expensive luxury material, the best surface material you could buy.

I still think of it that way. It is a far more responsible use of resources than quarrying stone for an entire planet's worth of kitchens - that will be dumped the next time fashion changes. Which, trust me, it will.

Formica is not and never has been vinyl. It is paper bonded with melamine resin.[this post was last edited: 9/8/2014-13:09]
 
I know Formica is not vinyl, but from the way you were describing the counter tops of the AK cabinets, it sounded more like linoleum than Formica, Micarta or Textolite. Our Decatur home was built in 1955 as were most of our neighbors' and I remember mom saying that most got Lino counter tops because the houses were built for sale, not by owners and she said what you did about why the Lino counter tops were not as good as Formica. We were very careful with the Formica, never setting anything hot on it, never dragging anything across it and always using a cutting board.
 
Sandy, I have been around AK cabinets a little, but I don't own any. I was struck by the corner cabinets the very first time I saw them, because I grew up around Youngstown cabinets, and those have very ample corner cabinets. The AK corners certainly look very stylish, and they have these odd little buttons you use to open them up--as I recall!! It's been a little while. But they are NARROW!!!
 
Sandy

thanks for bringing the American Kitchens documentation back from the past. Back in western NY state there are thousands of post WWII homes built with these cabinets as well as Youngstown. Some are still around. Zillow is a resource for unearthing this sort of thing.

By the time the 60' & 70's rolled around, many of these kitchens were being scrapped. In busy households porcelain sinks & drainboard tops were badly worn & chipped. The cabinet doors sagged, the drawers scraped along, the painted finish worn thin, rust & pit marks were common. The counter tops stained & scuffed and the chrome trims were crud cracks. Not pretty.

Interestingly, GE metal kitchens were popular too, in more upmarket homes and seemed to hold up better. They had laminate counter tops specifically made to fit the kitchen. Stainless steel sinks etc. In other words components that could be easily replaced without disturbing the cabinets.

Friends of my folks had a 1960 split level outfitted with a Turquoise GE kitchen with pink appliances. The only sign of wear; a faded spot on drawer front---- where oven cleaner dripped. The last time we were there 20 + years ago, it still looked good.

As you've mentioned, once the 60's came along, birch and other light wood tone cabinets put an end to the steel kitchen. SCHEIRICH kitchens were the thing to have.
 
Leslie:

My sister had a modest AK installation in her first house, which was a 1920s bungalow that had been updated in the '50s.

As you note, the passage of time had not been kind to the cabinets. Her kitchen's cabinets were a "starter" package of a wide sink base and a few wall cabinets; if the former owner had intended a full AK kitchen, they never got around to finishing it.

The hardest thing on the AK units had been Comet cleanser; the porcelain of the sink was like a medium-grit sandpaper after years of the stuff. There was also a rust problem inside the sink base where it had been subjected to drips from the plumbing.

The worst was a dripping faucet no one could cure. This was pre-Internet, and today's ready availability of replacement AK sink faucets was nonexistent.

My sister put up with all the problems, because she didn't want to spend money on that house - she had her sights set on a vinyl-and-drywall McMansion in Fairburn, a goal she achieved.

Still, it would have been possible to restore the cabinets - the sink top could have been re-porcelainized (by which I do not mean "re-glazing" with epoxy paint - I mean re-coating with real porcelain), and the cabinets bead-blasted and re-sprayed.

I'd love to have the chance to do that some day.
 
The Frigidaire Connection:

There was a connection between Frigidaire and AK - Raymond Loewy.

If you'll look at the photo of the RK-70 range (from 1948) below, you'll see that there were styling commonalities between Loewy's work for GM and his work for AK. The rounded leading edge of the cooktop is echoed in the rounded edges of AK wall cabinets; the base cabinet pulls look right at home with Loewy's Frigidaire knobs. Both the AK pulls and GM knobs have bright centers surrounded by flared plastic.

Interestingly, Frigidaire was very late to the dishwasher party - I think 1955 was their first year with a DW. Of course, AK was famous for its dishwasher, which I understand was one of the better impeller units. I don't think Loewy's relationship with AK had anything to do with GM's late DW intro, but it's interesting that the two Loewy lines interlocked the way they did - you could outfit an AK kitchen with Frigidaire appliances for an all-Loewy installation, without having to choose between GM and AK at any point in the process.

I guess the ultimate would have been an all-Loewy kitchen with a Loewy Studebaker coupe visible in the driveway through the kitchen window, LOL.[this post was last edited: 9/9/2014-06:22]

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Re Vinyl...

The vinyl used in the 50s on countertops, was not like Formica, but rather like linoleum...in that it was not a solid surface, it was sold on a roll, it was much more durable than linoleum, and I think might still be available in some areas, the beauty of it was it could be rolled up the wall behind the counter tops in one piece.
 
These AK units are very attractive...

but my bone to pick would be with all of the countertop seams as visible in the second illustration above... not the best for hygiene, one would think, with all those crevices to collect bacteria incubating stuff!
 
The countertop seams always bugged my in my great-aunt's Youngstown kitchen. Even as a small child, my thoughts of hidden dirt in them really concerned me. Later in life, I didn't like that I didn't have maximum space for rolling out pastry--and the dirt still bugged me. My aunt kept a very clean kitchen, so I'm sure those seams were clean, too. But the thought was always there.

By the way, the stainless (or is it chrome) seams between each surface are attached in a strangely complex way, at least on the Youngstowns. It's like a booby trap--they go on somehow but they don't readily come off.
 
Sandy, I'm thinking the porcelain sink tops on American Kitchens were enameled steel, rather than cast iron. I know Youngstown was steel, and usually got chipped in a short time. They usually don't look near as good after a few years as Kohler, Crane and American-Standard, which are cast iron.

As for the countertop seams, I would think that most people who installed the complete kitchen at one time, would have had continuous tops. I never personally saw the separate sections in any house I was in. When my parents had the Youngstown set installed in '53, it had regular Formica tops in the Gray Cracked Ice pattern. The sink-drainboard unit had the enamel top. Mom said she would have liked a nice Elkay stainless sink top, but that cost too much.

As for wood cabinets, they had actually began to become popular in the early 50's around here. One neighbor's home had the kitchen remodeled sometime in '54, with birch cabinets, and GE built-in oven and cooktop (all still in place). Tops were linoleum in a dark Green color (replaced). The house next door to it, built in '50, also had wood. My friend Marilynn at the corner, whose house was constructed in '56, had Scheirich birch cabinets, but those were replaced by Kraft Maid Cherry ones about 12 years ago.

As for vinyl, I've seen Armstrong Corlon and similiar used on tops in place of linoleum, but I wouldn't want it next to a range due to heat damage potential. Have seen it coved up the backsplash as Hans mentioned.
 
The Seam Issue:

I would be the very first to agree that the "modular" AK countertops with the seams between each unit would be dirt-catchers in the hands of the average '50s housewife, who was not nearly as much of a perfectionist as she wanted you to believe.

However, we need to look at the seamed countertops in the context of their time, and at that time, a reasonably impervious countertop surface of any description was a fairly new luxury in most peoples' lives. Formica was a new, expensive "wonder" material. Tile was for the rich. Marble was pretty much unheard-of for countertops. Linoleum was fairly common, but it was not usually very long-lived; it was vulnerable to cutting, rotting from moisture exposure, denting from dropped objects or heavy ones, and grease staining. Grease could actually start dissolving linoleum if left on it long enough in sufficient quantity.

What did most people have? In a word, oilcloth. It was not a particularly long-lived counter covering, and not an especially sanitary one in most housewives' hands, but it was cheap, and any householder could rip off the old and tack on some new. In 1930, etiquette doyenne Emily Post published her book on decorating, The Personality of a House. Many of the photos in the book were of Emily's own beautiful house in Martha's Vineyard; one shot showed her kitchen. In this kitchen - the kitchen of a wealthy woman whose house incorporated three maid's rooms - the counters were covered in oilcloth.

So, vinyl bonded to steel would have been a Godsend to homeowners who grew up with these unsatisfactory, less-than-sanitary surfaces. A few seams were not going to bother most people; the miracle of an affordable sanitary surface was enough.

Different time. *EDIT* I should point out that some people also had porcelain worktops on Hoosier cabinets and worktables. Of course, this was not the same as having a large countertop. [this post was last edited: 9/9/2014-20:12]
 
My aunt had her whole Youngstown kitchen installed all at one time, so now I really am puzzled by the seams. If it's true that complete purchases had continuous cabinets, then I have no idea why she didn't.

Her countertops were the gray cracked ice, if I know what you're talking about.

I remember her telling me the story of how the Youngstown salesman made a little model of their completed kitchen, and I've been amused to see those kits for sale on eBay from time to time.
 
John:

My grandmother's first owned house, built in '48, had the Youngstown cabinets with the seamed "modular" countertops in marbleized red, so I've seen what you're talking about.

I do not know if Youngstown had seamless countertops available at the time. AK did in '53, because I have the '53 catalog downloaded from Automatic Ephemera, but I don't know if AK had them earlier than that, or if Youngstown had them available at all.

That Youngstown kitchen of my grandmother's is the kitchen I always return to in memory. It was not large, and it sure as Hell wasn't fancy, but some of the best food I've ever eaten in my life came from it. Mama Mac was a great down-home cook, serving up delicious vegetables and desserts made from fruit grown in her own garden. But she was also a great experimenter, always eager to try new things she found in magazines and cookbooks. The first tacos I ever had in my life were at her house - in '59 or '60, I think it was. She once sampled a new food craze, corn dogs, at the Southeastern Fair, and marched herself right home and started experimenting until she found the secret - lots of egg in a very stiff batter. You gotta love a grandmother who makes you corn dogs, right? Of course right!

White metal cabinets, red marbleized counters, black-and-white vinyl-asbestos tile, and red-and-white gingham curtains. Someday. Someday. Except that asbestos part.
 
Like you, Sandy, I remember my aunt's old kitchen as a place of great happiness. I stayed with her a couple of weeks or more every summer, and a couple of weeks with my grandmother; and I alternated Thanksgiving and Christmas between them. Those were fantastic times, with all the family and friends coming in and out, maybe just to visit, maybe for dinner.

My grandmother's kitchen was a tiny little disaster--how she cranked out meals for her own kids and her 7 siblings and 12 nieces and nephews who spent most of the summer at the home place, I'll never know! But my great-aunt's Youngtown kitchen was just dreamy. I learned to cook on those countertops and on her old Frigidaire RD-39-63. Up to year 2000, I cooked almost every holiday meal there. And one of the happiest memories for me is that my partner, now husband, got to spend six holidays there himself, to be with my family, and to see what all the fuss of a country Christmas was really about.

I'm not so terribly old yet, but I'm not young either. People ask me sometimes what I think about getting old. I always have the same answer. I've never been cute or fashionable or trendy or cool, so age hasn't taken away those superficial things that matter so much to other people. But the one truly terrible thing about growing old is that we lose all the people who loved us more than we could ever love them in return. Memories of all those past times are hard, sometimes; but they strengthen me, too.
 
John:

Your last paragraph hit quite a few nails right on the head!

My grandmother's Youngstown Kitchen was, I think, a builder's special. The kitchen was tiny (as was the entire house), with the entire Youngstown installation on one wall. There was a 36" gas range whose brand I cannot remember, a sink base, a couple more base cabinets and a semicircular shelf unit beside the door. Wall cabinets were above, extending the entire length of the room.

The other side of the room had a Philco fridge next to the door. With the exception of the table, that was it. Very basic early-'50s kitchen that very few homeowners would tolerate today.

Mama Mac cooked three square meals a day in it, plus baking, blanching for the freezer (a mammoth Coldspot chest model in the basement), canning, jam- and jelly-making, company dinners and Sunday breakfasts for extended family. No microwave, no self-cleaning oven, no frost-free fridge, no dishwasher, not even a vent fan or vent hood. Just talent and determination.

I really miss that lady.
 

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