18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, April 14, 1913: Nothing very much a doing.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I’ll share two charming house plans that I found in the April, 1913 issue of Ladies Home Journal.
I love these plans! It’s so interesting to see how layouts of homes differ in different eras and in different countries.
I also enjoyed seeing what house plans from back then looked like.
Love the look of the houses but I am going to need a master bath and add a half bath downstairs. :-)))) Having an indoor bath was a blessing for many families 100 years ago.
I had the same thought. I’m almost certain that farm families in Pennsylvania didn’t have indoor bathrooms back then. These house designs must have been for more urban areas.
I really like the porch on the first house and the flower boxes.
The porch and flower boxes make it look so nice and homey.
Nice pictures, we have many homes that look like these around here. I find it interesting to see the closet space. Our home was built in the mid 1800’s with no closets they are all added in. I also like the pantry’s and notice how that seems to be part of new home building again. When we re-do our kitchen that is on my list – I would love to have a pantry.
These plans do have a surprising amount of closet space. The farm house that I grew up in, like your house, had very few closet–and we kept our clothes in wardrobes until we eventually added in some closets.
Must have been around that time they started to put in closets, something we take for granted.
Cute houses – I could live in one of those!
I could, too. 🙂
I like the style of the first one better, but the rooms are considerably smaller. I don’t know what I’d do without closets. Other pieces of furniture took their place in those days, but in such a small room, that would be a bit confining.
I especially like the porch on the first one. It looks like the perfect place to sit with a cold glass on lemonade on a hot summer day.
Oh, yes, I DID like that porch!
I would have thought the front door would be off of the big porch. Are those French doors or windows there?
I hadn’t noticed it until you pointed it out, but the floor plan does look like the openings off the front porch are all French doors. That seems really strange–you’d think that the middle one would be a door and the rest windows.
I wonder if these were quite large houses in those days. I notice there was an ice box – no fridges in those days!
I’m not sure whether or not they were larger than average–but they seem like they must have been very “modern” by the standards of a hundred years ago with indoor bathrooms and built-in closets.
Good picks Sheryl. I love the first one. I’d make the storage area on the main floor a powder room and Bob’s-your-Uncle. I also like the little flower alcove upstairs too.
You never can have too much storage space. 🙂
Interesting to see all the special places; store room, ice box areas, flower areas, coat cupboard and built in seats and book shelves.
I love houses with build-in seats. They always seem so cozy.
I have similar floor plans for the 1920s Aladdin Homes. I’d love to have a 1:6 scale dollhouse made from one of them. Thank you for sharing these. I prefer these old style homes to the suburban style ranch homes of the 1950s or the lofts popular in the 1980s.
I’d never heard of Aladdin Homes until I read your comment, so I googled it and found a nice web page about them on the Central Michigan Library site.
http://clarke.cmich.edu/resource_tab/aladdin_company_of_bay_city/aladdin_company_of_bay_city_index.html
Thank you for this link! I’ll check it out more when there’s time.
Hi. I like the store rooms and pantries. Tomorrow’s houses will need a room for re-cycling!!! Nice post! Jane
It’s interesting how the rooms that houses have has varied over time. My father often talks about houses having “summer kitchens” back in the days when there were wood stoves. During the hot summer months, food was cooked in the summer kitchen to try to keep the main house cooler.
What a great find Sheryl. I really love the floor plan of the first house and the outside appearance of the second. All they both need is a downstairs bathroom and either would suit me just fine. 🙂
Absolutely–downstairs bathrooms are a must for a house to suit me.
Such a lovely post!! I love both floor plans! With little renovation (adding guest toilet downstairs and one bath upstairs) I could live in both of them! Really impressive how great architects were 100 years ago. Nowadays here looks impossible to find one that great…
I’m also surprised how liveable these old designs are.
I love this. My favorite exterior is the second…the first one’s caption about the seats and arbor making it the front door…I don’t agree. The porch still looks like the front to me. But I love the interior for the first. It’s odd that there’s no “master bedroom” with its own bath in either of the houses.