1938
William Burk, Jr.
324 Hermosa Bulldoze SE

Instance report past Sharon Karpinski

Effigy 1. Kelvinator House (too known as Raabe House), Albuquerque, NM, 1938. Source: Albuquerque Progress, February 1938. Photograph by Camera Shop of New United mexican states.

Albuquerque's "House of Tomorrow"

The 1933–34 Chicago World'southward Off-white buildings, at the time considered the height of American modernity, influenced United states of america architectural design for many years thereafter. The earlier 1893 Chicago fair, site of David Burnham's Greco-Roman White City, had been criticized at the time as a retrograde design by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. "The Columbian Exposition set dorsum American architecture past l years," Louis Sullivan declared. But forty years after, both of them commanded considerably more respect, and Chicago'southward 1933 fair offered an architectural vision that was considerably more forward looking. 1 That fair, called the "Century of Progress International Exposition," which had been planned earlier the crash of 1929, opened in the center of a worldwide economical crisis. Despite that fact, or mayhap because of it, the Century of Progress resolutely focused on an optimistic vision of the United States notwithstanding to come, a premise that proved wise: it attracted and so many visitors that organizers kept the fair open for a second year.

One of the 1933 off-white'due south most popular exhibits featured thirteen futuristic houses clustered together on the shores of Lake Michigan. 2 Those houses, built from innovative construction materials and with several examples clearly paying homage to the European "International Style" or the vernacular "Streamline Moderne," turned out to be oversupply pleasers. Few fairgoers actually contemplated living in homes like George Fred Keck's Glass House, a three-story, glass-clad, polygonal tower suspended from a central pole that clearly owed a lot to Le Corbusier's thought of the business firm equally a "machine for living," but almost attendees marveled at the technology displayed within and without. 3 Keck's house controlled its own climate via central systems and sealed windows. It included not but a garage for the car but a hanger for the family aeroplane. Keck's blueprint, which the fair billed as the "House of Tomorrow," made the June 1933 encompass of Popular Mechanics . The idea of an "automatic" house that heated and cooled itself, rotated to face the sun, and opened its own venetian blinds caught the fancy of fairgoers. It likewise influenced architects throughout the United States in the subsequent years before Globe War 2. Bits and pieces of the off-white'south dramatic architecture showed up on the cultural periphery, even in places like New Mexico, a location that many Americans thought was non even role of the The states, and even in Albuquerque, its largest city simply one that contained merely virtually 30,000 inhabitants in the mid-1930s. One of those architects, William Burk, Jr., a local practitioner in Albuquerque, demonstrated this far-flung influence and the way it transformed residential architecture in the United States. He brought the design elements of both the International Manner and the more mass-market place-oriented Streamline Moderne way together in the firm he built on Hermosa Drive SE in the tardily 1930s, in the city'south Granada Hills district, the subject field of this instance study.

In a town full of faux-adobe casitas, Burk'southward white stucco construct, featuring a wall of windows on its downslope side behind a drinking glass brick prow aimed toward Highland Avenue (now Coal Artery), was similar no other dwelling in the city. Burk's second floor, flanked on both sides past the railings of the roof decks, looked more like the bow of the Ile de France than information technology did a domicile, at least from the s side. Since it stood on a treeless hill with near no other houses around it, the house attracted a lot of attention even before completion. The merely structure it resembled for most observers was the Phillips 66 service station on nearby Central Artery that, not and so coincidentally, Burk had also designed.

Actually, although Burk's house reflected both stylistic and integral features of the International Style, as set along especially by Le Corbusier – peculiarly a not-axial floor plan concerned with book rather than mass and rooftop terraces connected to an indoor/outdoor recreation room, all lit by those floor to ceiling window walls – the Albuquerque firm also owed a lot to another property that had appeared at the Chicago Fair. The appliance manufacturer Frigidaire had sponsored the "Frigidaire Air-Conditioned House" to showcase that people could live comfortably year-round in even the hot and humid summer and icy winter of the Midwest by using their air conditioning and heating equipment. 4  The Frigidaire house, like the belongings Burk subsequently built, had an attached garage directly accessing the house to emphasize the possessor's control over the surroundings (there would be no moisture feet in inclement weather) and an elaborate heating and cooling organisation operated from a central control panel on the chief floor. Its "leisure lounge" was a highlight of the dwelling. The sponsor described it equally a space where the wife could "thoroughly relish her afternoon siesta" or her husband could "completely relax after a hard twenty-four hours's work." The firm, in other words, was modern, urban, laborsaving, and reflective of how the gimmicky metropolis dweller or suburbanite aspired to live, in part with the aid of new engineering. Over the next few years, a score of buildings that besides characterized the home as a machine sprang upwards beyond the United States. Burk'south blueprint at 324 Hermosa Drive SE was one of them, a fact suggested fifty-fifty in the house'due south nickname, the "Kelvinator Firm."

Figure two. Kelvinator House, Coal Avenue (south) façade, October 2015. Photograph by author.

Indeed, Walter Raabe, a local hardware shop owner, had commissioned Burk to put up his own version of a "demonstration house" that would illustrate how Kelvin Appliances, which Raabe sold, could make Burk's house a design of the future. Although not big (it started life with merely 2 bedrooms and one bath) the demo firm included a partial second floor devoted entirely to indoor/outdoor leisure and entertaining. Circular stairs lit by that glass block wall led to this purely recreational infinite. Burk's 2nd floor was and still is an improvement on the basement rec room that would follow as a staple of postwar bourgeoisie. A large rooftop terrace created boosted living space in dry weather, an thought well suited to New Mexico. The unabridged plan pivoted around the cadre of the house. The front door opened into a vestibule at the center of the cadre, a space holding the closets, fireplace and stairs to the second floor. Off the antechamber to the right was the bedroom and bathroom fly. To the left was the kitchen with its door to the garage. Straight ahead, the anteroom opened straight to the living room'southward curved wall of windows, the business firm'due south most theatrical gesture, with outdoor decks beyond, leading to a large, terraced g. v The firm's primal core grounded the spacious, dramatic first floor. For such a modest firm, the design delivered generous, pleasing public spaces well separated from the bedrooms. Afterwards the country'due south brief romance with bungalows in the early part of the twentieth century, a clear separation between private and public space again had get the standard for American homes. Even today, the Kelvinator House notably emphasizes this compartmentalization, cloaked in the era'south newest blueprint linguistic communication.

Figure iii. Kelvinator House, e façade, October 2015. Photograph by writer.

Besides, the kitchen of the Kelvinator House notwithstanding accurately reflects the era'southward preoccupation with the "auto ideal" of efficiency. The kitchen had go industrial space, at least philosophically, rather than a family unit setting. The housewife, its operator, personified the domestic scientist. In upscale neighborhoods like Granada Hills, the automobile itself became part of the firm-as-machine, so the Kelvinator housewife walked directly from her fastened garage into the kitchen to put down the groceries or unload the kids. She could also easily reach the basement from the kitchen, for quick access to the laundry room and the firm'southward mechanical systems. The business firm'due south front entryway, although next to the driveway and garage, was clearly intended more for visitors than for the family unit. It presents a curvaceous Moderne facade that replicates the glass bend of the recreation expanse above it, a stark contrast with the commonsensical entry direct into the kitchen.

Inside the kitchen, the housewife found a space that presumed a modern, servantless household, as did the Frigidaire prototype at the World's Fair. Both kitchens illustrated the time and movement study principles for domestic efficiency as promulgated by Christine Frederick and Lillian Gilbreth in the 1920s. 6  Gilbreth even filmed the kitchen worker attached to a flashlight in a darkened room to trace her pathways as she cooked and cleaned. These women, both engineers, shrank the spacious Victorian kitchen to save the housewife steps and logically organized the remaining space to save time and effort. 7 Burk'south blueprint for the kitchen on Hermosa Drive included fitted metal cabinets to shop food and utensils near the piece of work surface area, a startling departure from the sink pantry of the Victorian era—that completely split room far from the kitchen stove and the simply identify in almost houses with storage cabinets. The sink itself, along with fitted counters on both sides for nutrient preparation, became an integral role of the kitchen, located only steps from the electric stove which was, in plow, located only steps from the dining area tucked into an apse off the living room. The formal dining room had gone the style of the maid that the mod housewife no longer needed. Over the sink a bank of casement windows illuminated the space. Their industrial steel window frames further emphasized the idea of the kitchen equally a product infinite. And then did the heating and air-conditioning controls for the entire business firm, which were located on the wall above the stove. A folding ironing board, which disappeared into the wall when not in use, completed this picture of mod housewifery. Naturally, the latest Kelvinator appliances furnished the kitchen and laundry rooms. This was no surprise, since the Raabe and Mauger Hardware Company publicly stated that they had congenital the firm to "prove that a family of moderate income can enjoy the fruits of modernistic housing research." They continued, "the Kelvin-Home volition feature many avant-garde improvements not embodied in residences costing several times its toll … [including] a scientifically planned and equipped kitchen." viii

What was non in the Kelvin-Home was whatsoever wasted space in the nutrient prep area. One melt fit. Two cooks didn't. The era's kitchens banished fripperies like a place to sit down with that second cup of coffee or a perch for the family unit true cat. This 1930s ideal (houses far less futuristic than the Kelvinator House had pocket-sized, tightly efficient kitchens with no consume-in capacity) roughshod from favor within twenty years. Few 1930s kitchens survive intact. They roughshod victim to the trends of husbands who cook, children who need questions answered and admission to afternoon snacks, and mothers who wish to talk to the rest of the family while they stir the soup. In fact, the tiny kitchen betrays one of the conundrums of these supposedly modernistic Houses of Tomorrow. Although they were built for modest families, they don't suit the needs of a household without servants well at all.

That was particularly true of Burk's blueprint for this house and the site exterior its walls. The Kelvinator Firm stands on a big terraced lot which cannot easily be observed from the "working" areas of the house. The kitchen windows look out to the streetscape in front of the business firm. The domestic scientist whipping up a soufflé in the kitchen could not run into what her children were upwardly to in the commodious back garden. The house didn't accommodate a nursemaid or, in her stead, a cook then that the mother could spend time on those expansive, outdoor spaces with her children. The patios and terraces surrounding the living room's semicircular windows were clearly designed for outdoor living. Mrs. Raabe, an avid horticulturist, insisted on a permanent greenhouse continued to the master bedroom and the e frontage terrace that she filled with ornamentals. But the rear yard is a big, complex space that demands a lot more effort than only cutting the grass. nine A gardener seems necessary, likewise equally an at-least-part-time kid minder, only the Kelvinator Firm can comfortably suit neither. The 1930s "Houses of Tomorrow" still observed formal separations like the closed kitchen or the dedicated dining area. Family areas or playrooms next to kitchens don't appear in their plans. Although architects stressed efficiency so that one lonely homemaker could make that home, their bodily designs seem sometimes to undermine the whole concept. Basement laundries were mutual, for example. How was a housewife from the pocket-sized family that the Kelvinator House and its contemporary prototypes hypothesized supposed to melt, clean, do the laundry, and atomic number 26 while keeping an eye on the kids?

As the house'due south current resident explains, "The retainer's quarters in Downton Abbey were a palace compared to what the Raabes' domestic workers got." 10 The Raabes did, indeed, employ a maid and a gardener, suggesting their ain realization of the limitations of their home. The realities of the site precluded the efficiency of the design for a house without "assist." The Raabe servants lived in the basement, which has no on-form windows, merely window wells, and no real room divisions. Since the plumbing extended to the basement level for the laundry, a rudimentary restroom and a shower were rigged. But that was almost it for amenities. The Century of Progress collided with Depression-era Albuquerque. Help was cheap.

Effigy four. Addition to the Kelvinator House by Edna Heatherington, ca. 1976. Source: New United mexican states Architecture, November-Dec 1976.

Edna Heatherington, then a main'due south degree candidate in compages at the University of New Mexico, bought the Kelvinator House in the 1970s. She subsequently designed and built an add-on that provided private spaces commensurate with the big, gracious public spaces the house had e'er had. Heatherington and her husband added a second-story studio for her, and created an expansive master bedroom and bath from role of the original rooftop recreation infinite. The addition, which Heatherington described for New Mexico Architecture in 1976, was a "Theoretical Revival of an International Style Business firm." As she explained of her blueprint, "the volume of the garage is expanded up: the original horizontality is changed to a balance of larger volumes on each side of the entrance, toward which both sides curve. The bend of the new wall above matches the bend of the old wall below, and both motion in toward the center where the terrace steps back in a higher place the front door. Sharp edges and smooth surfaces, specially the unbroken curve and flatness of the front (due west) wall, appear cloudlike and weightless." 11

The house today looks like information technology always had a nearly total 2nd story. The addition blends seamlessly. It also solves most of the issues inherent in Burk'due south original "modest" habitation, which lacked substantial private spaces. Heatherington'due south studio, currently used as a his-and-hers part by the present possessor, could too serve every bit a big indoor family space, private but with views of the Manzanos. For a family with older children, the downstairs bedrooms provide excellent teen space carve up from the parents' sanctum on the second floor. The kitchen remains as well small, a problem even contempo renovations cannot overcome, simply the rest of the house works and so well that it is easy to overlook that one trouble. At nearly 80, the Kelvinator Business firm is a firm for today.

  1. "Chicago: Urban center of the Century," American Feel , accessed 4 October 2015, http://pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/peopleevents/p_sullivan.html .
  2. H. Ward Jandl, John A. Burns, and Michael J. Auer, Yesterday's Houses of Tomorrow: Innovative American Homes, 1850–1950 (Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1991, 130.
  3. Ibid., 132-139.
  4. Lisa D. Schrenk, Building a Century of Progress; The Architecture of Chicago'southward 1933-34 Globe's Fair (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 179-180.
  5. "National Annals Nomination Form for Kelvinator House," vii September 1978, Box 1, Binder 9, Bainbridge Bunting Papers (MSS 385 BC), Center for Southwest Inquiry and Special Collections, Academy of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
  6. Alexandra Lange, "The Woman Who Invented the Kitchen: She Couldn't Cook," Slate , 25 Oct 2012, accessed 1 October 2015, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/design/2012/10/lillian_gilbreth_s_kitchen_practical_how_it_reinvented_the_modern_kitchen.html .
  7. Pelting Noe, "A Brief History of Kitchen Design, Part 4: Christine Frederick's 'New Housekeeping' and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's Frankfurt Kitchen," Core 77 , ane July 2011, accessed ane October 2015, http://www.core77.com/posts/19779/a-cursory-history-of-kitchen-design-part-4-christine-fredericks-new-housekeeping-and-margarete-schtte-lihotzkys-frankfurt-kitchen-19779.
  8. "Kelvin Home for W.C. Raabe," Albuquerque Progress , February 1938.
  9. Nance Crow, interview past author, Albuquerque, NM, i Oct 2015.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Edna Heatherington Bergman, "Theoretical Revival of an International Manner House," New United mexican states Architecture , Nov-December 1976, 15-twenty.