Kitchens are typically open, connected and viewable from another aspect of a house. I understand that that’s a pro for ventilation however, if a kitchen fire were to start, wouldn’t it be better to have it be in a closed off room that you can just easily shut a door too? For example, if a kitchen was placed in an area that could be used as a bedroom, wouldn’t that be good for stopping the spread of a fire if one were to occur?
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Throughout most of the last 1000 years, kitchens were separated from the general living space in almost all houses, and still are in many places.
To address the question, in my opinion it helps to look less at old houses (pre-1850) or new houses (post-1950) and more at houses from in between. Before 1850, kitchens were often built as a separate building entirely, while post-1950, the kitchen is more often open to the rest of the main rooms on the main floor of the house.
But between those years is a transition period that I find instructive. Prior to 1950 the kitchen was considered working space, a noisy, messy space for servants (when available) and to be kept out of the public eye. While the use of open fire for cooking had been a thing of the past for a couple generations in most of America and Europe by 1950, the kitchen was still being built as though smoke and ash were a factor. Building styles often adapt more slowly than the lives lived in the houses themselves.
Prior to EIGHTEEN fifty, the kitchen did present something of a fire hazard but more importantly, in those days most every kitchen was a place of blood and guts, loose feathers and alchemy. You’re maybe familiar with the phrase about “knowing how the sausage is made.” Well, in those days EVERYONE knew how sausage was made and they sure as hell wanted a little distance from it.
In between 1850 and 1950 you have a number of innovations that change everything about food preparation and make it possible and even desirable to put the kitchen into the public eye. Canned foods made spoilage much less of a concern and allowed large amounts of staple foods to be stored right in the room. Refrigeration made it possible to buy meats that were uncured and already processed, making the scullery obsolete. The modern combination of oven and cook top saved a great deal of space and energy, allowing the whole works to fit into a reasonably sized room in the house itself. Indoor plumbing made cleanup far easier. To prepare what we think of as a full dinner would take a minimum of twelve hours in 1850. By 1950, a reasonably competent home cook could turn out a dinner for company in an hour or two. It’s impossible to overstate how much that changed daily life. Lastly, the television made cooking a glamorous occupation and part of an evening’s entertainment.
So what one sees in houses built around the turn of the 20th century is a kitchen space built into the main home, but still treated as work space. There’s typically (if the original floor plan survives) both a door to the public space–typically right into the dining room–and a door to the outside or into other working spaces like the basement or a foyer where the ice box would’ve been. Larger houses will usually have a rear stairwell from the kitchen up to servant’s quarters and down to the basement. The finishes will often be of less expensive materials, in very sharp contrast to newer houses, where kitchen finishes are usually MORE expensive.
So there you go. Doesn’t really have anything to do with fire, since for most of history EVERY room had a fire. Has a lot more to do with sausage casing and Julia Child.
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