Katherine Jacobs
One of the frequent comments about the kitchen as an inside room had been ‘I don’t think I’d like that,” but Katherine told her audience: ‘The dining room alcove faces the east, with windows to the ceiling, starting four feet from the floor. Instead of one small window over the sink I enjoy this lovely view over the hills through the big windows. None of the exterior wall space of the house is sacrificed for the kitchen, but I have the pleasure of the best view while I work." Katherine had answers too for those accustomed to a separate dining room and kitchen with a door to close. ‘Your guests can look right into the kitchen’, had been the criticism. She pointed out that the kitchen was partly screened on one side by open shelves carrying bright objects like a tea cozy, cookie jars and trays, which hid the stove, while a refrigerator behind a partition on the other side of the opening concealed the sink. The open shelves on the dining table rose to join a whole array of open shelves on the dining side rose to join a whole array of open shelves which covered the back wall of the fireplace. . . . ‘Granted, this kind of arrangement does not become a formal life,’ Katherine said, ‘but please remember that it was designed for a woman who does her own work, and who prefers the simple and informal life. Most of us who have a fifty-five hundred dollar house do live a simple life.’ She proved later that the kitchen was big enough to allow preparation of buffet meals for forty to fifty guests. She might have added that this open-style kitchen enabled her to remain in close touch with her guests when she had to be in the kitchen during the various stages of the meal. And the central location of the kitchen, as she discovered later with more children, was an excellent command post from which to keep any eye on them in the garden, terrace, living room, or bedroom wing. (pp. 48-49)
Herbert Jacobs, Building with Frank Lloyd Wright, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1978.
Herbert Jacobs, Building with Frank Lloyd Wright, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1978.
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