Business: Kitchen Comeback

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Said a Seattle housewife last week: "We spend at least 50% of our waking hours in the kitchen. It would be silly not to make it one of the nicest rooms in the house."

Making the kitchen a nice room has meant a drastic change in kitchen design. In the '30s and '40s it was fashionable to compress the kitchen into a space-saving, antiseptic cubicle. But as postwar families grew, kitchens grew with them. Since the war and the shortage of domestic help, whole houses are virtually being designed around colorful, labor-saving kitchens that can also serve as all-purpose living space for the family.

No Stoop, No Stretch. It is not only the housewife who calls for all the changes; her husband, especially if he has to help clean up with the children underfoot, is often more insistent. Kitchens can be equipped or renovated for anywhere from $500 to $15,000. The lower price pays for about twelve running feet of cabinets and counter tops, a sink, but no appliances. A $15,000 kitchen would include custom-built wood cabinets, stainless steel sink and counter tops, dishwasher, disposer, freezer, refrigerator, washer, dryer, an electric oven in the wall, a fireplace, special cabinets for trays, bottles, cutlery and vegetables.

Many new kitchens virtually eliminate stooping and stretching. The refrigerator and oven fit into the wall at waist level. A mixer folds into the counter like a secretary's typewriter. Wall cabinets are low, and floor storage shelves roll out on bearings, or rise to work level as they are pulled out.

Last week General Motors showed off some new gadgets in its "kitchen of tomorrow." Electronically controlled cabinets slide down to easy reach with a wave of the hand, and cabinet doors pop open by light pressure on the front panel. A new appliance provides a choice of cold water, ice cubes or crushed ice. For easy reading, recipes are flashed onto a screen when they are placed in a photographic viewer. The sink provides water at any temperature from a single faucet. An electronic oven rises at the press of a button, bakes potatoes in five minutes or roasts a turkey in 45. Even the flour-sifter is motor-driven.

Barbecue Bonanza. Thanks largely to the kitchen craze, the appliance business, which grossed only $685 million a year prewar, is now a $5 billion giant. Stores that supply kitchen furnishings have never had it so good. Chicago's Carson Pirie Scott & Co. separated its kitchen furnishings from its appliances 18 months ago, and sales rose from $35,000 a year to $90,000. The American Rack Merchandisers' Institute announced that 1953 sales of housewares in supermarkets came to $135 million, v. $113 million a year earlier. Sales of kitchen furniture last year totaled $500 million, up 8% from 1952, v. a 5% rise for all furniture sales.