Hasta La Ideas

In 1869, Catharine Beecher’s intelligent kitchen design from 1843 was reprinted in The American Woman’s Home, co-written with sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, but still did not see mass uptake. A rational kitchen design based on ergonomics was not the kind of thing that could set America on fire. Electricity was, sometimes literally. When cities began installing electricity en masse around the turn of the 20th century, kitchens would change forever.

But before electricity there were other potent innovations, like gas and water. The widespread installation of running water in the 19th century provided a huge boon to kitchens, because now you had this big magical white thing that you could fill with water without having to carry a bucket to that well down by the Johnsons’ house. Unsurprisingly, sinks became a focal point of the kitchen. They were also huge, heavy and difficult to move, which gave rise to the expression “Everything but the kitchen sink,” meaning if you were going to clear out of your house and take everything you could carry or move, the cast-iron kitchen sink would not be one of those things.

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