Floor Plans

There are more reasons to arrange a home than just the fun of decorating. Every room and every item in the home has a purpose. Some of the houses of the 1920's make a lot more "sense" for the function of the family, than the houses that were built at the end of the 20th century.

For example, families spent more time in their homes, and things like having a view from the kitchen sink were important. One of the 1920's houses we lived in seemed to have a meaning in every corner.

At evening time, we could imagine the wife sitting in a favorite chair with just the right amount of evening sun shining across her book, her journal, or her mending.

The breakfast area was in just the right place in the house to observe the first light of day and the sunrise. A room facing north was just perfect for an artist who needed lots of good light and few shadows.

The bedrooms on the south side of the house were protected from the morning sun and the harsh evening sun. The living area took full advantage of the sunset. Trees and bushes which bloomed at certain times of the year, were placed where they would be most appreciated from the windows. A front porch was a perfect extension of the house, creating another family room where members sat in the evenings and waved to people walking or driving past.

Windows were similar to the the one you see here, from floor to ceiling. The kitchen, though separate from the eating areas, was visible from other rooms, so that those working in the kitchen could still keep an eye on the activities of the rest of the household, and speak to the rest of the family without having to shout.

Instead of having a garage in the front of the house, one had to drive around the back of the house to park. This made the front of the house far more picturesque. It reminds me of the carriage houses, that were built for the carriages. They were not in full view of the front of the house, as garages are today.

Contrast these houses from the 1800's and the 1920's and 1940's with the houses built in the 1960's and 70's. I lived in a few of them and was always depressed. I could never figure out how I could be so unhappy and yet have a house of my very own, but even the log house my father and mother built, that I grew up in, made more sense with the way the floor plans and windows were arranged. In these new tract homes, the windows were so high up on the wall, and so short in size, that no one cold see out of them. It made you feel as if you were locked up in an institution, away from the outdoors.

Children growing up in these homes were not able to spend hours and hours of time staring outside at the rain or watching things happen outside. What in the world were the architects of these "homes" thinking?

These houses also had a rush-rush feeling, as though the floor plans were designed for people to run home, get something, and run back out again. Everything was so convenient that it hardly warranted any kind of protocol or feeling to do it. One didn't think much about what they were doing, they just rushed in and rushed out. To help you understand what I am talking about, there were no entrances. You just opened the door, and there you were, right in someone's living room.

There was no place to hang your coat or lay down your umbrella or hat or handbag or briefcase. In spite of the conveniences these houses were giving, it was a lot of trouble to find a place for things. With no entrance, one had to go further down the hall to put their wraps away. When company came, all the coats and handbags had to go on the guest room bed.

Contrast this to the little entry ways of the houses of the previous century and the turn of the century: A little seating area just by the front door allowed people to wait for the father to get the car and drive up to the front step to fetch the family for an outing. In this area were hooks for coats and a place for boots and umbrellas.

There were many other problems of these modern homes. The dining rooms were almost eliminated in favor of a kitchen eating area. I found that this was not very relaxing. I liked a dining room because it was away from the mess in the kitchen, and encouraged us to set the table and sit down to eat together. I like to have both, if possible, and to have several areas to have meals: a breakfast room, a dining room, a place on the patio, and maybe another eating area in the family room. A person can certainly live without several eating areas, but at least a dining room adds a feeling of specialness to eating, as well as architectural interest in the lay out of the floor plans.

Romantic Homes magazine, Country Decorating Ideas, and Cottage Style magazine have had several articles in the past few years, that have shown how enterprising women and men have taken tract homes and made them beautiful by adding architectural interest and rooms within rooms, to give them living areas where none were intended. One article showed how a living room was divided in half by a short bookshelf, to enable the couple to have a dining room. They hung a plug-in chandelier from a hook in the ceiling, and created a soothing eating area away from the kitchen.

These houses did not have much access to the back yard and the back door. Whereas the family dwelling of the 1920's may have had a back entry area where people could leave their gardening gloves and wash their hands before entering the main part of the house, the tract home had no convenient access to the back door (it was usually fenced) unless you were already in the house. In one of the older homes we lived in, our children loved to come home from somewhere, get out of the car, and run around to the back part of the house.

I sometimes wonder if some of the homes of the 60's and 70's were built in light of the transient family and unstable marriages. They had "resale value" instead of sentimental value.

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