American home life, 1880-1930 : a social history of spaces and services
In the pivotal decades around the turn of the century, American domestic life underwent dramatic alteration. From backstairs to front stairs, spaces and the activities within them were radically affected by shifts in the larger social and material environments. This volume, while taking account of architecture and decoration, moves us beyond the study of buildings to the study of behaviors, particularly the behaviors of those who peopled the middle-class, single-family, detached American home between 1880 and 1930. The book's contributors study transformations in services (such as home utilities of power, heat, light, water, and waste removal) in servicing (for example, the impact of home appliances such as gas and electric ranges, washing machines, and refrigerators), and in serving (changes in domestic servants' duties, hours of work, racial and ethnic backgrounds). In blending intellectual and home history, these essays both examine and exemplify the perennial American enthusiasm for, as well as anxiety about, the meaning of modernity
Print Book, English, ©1992
University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, ©1992
History
ix, 284 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780870497599, 0870497596
25552930
Introduction : American homes and American scholars / Thomas J. Schlereth
The modern look of the early twentieth-century house : a mirror of changing lifestyles / Candace M. Volz
The decline of the memory palace : the parlor after 1890 / Katherine C. Grier
Children in the house, 1890 to 1930 / Karin Calvert
Home libraries : special spaces, reading places / Linda M. Kruger
A history of American beds and bedrooms, 1890-1930 / Elizabeth Collins Cromley
"The family that plays together stays together" : family pastimes and indoor amusements, 1890-1930 / Donna R. Braden
Parlor piety : the home as sacred space in Protestant America / Colleen McDannell
Gardens of change / Patricia M. Tice
Coal stoves and clean sinks : housework between 1890 and 1930 / Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Conduits and conduct : home utilities in Victorian America, 1876-1915 / Thomas J. Schlereth. Modernizing domestic service / Daniel E. Sutherland