• New Report Shows "Sprinkles" are Working to Prevent and Treat Childhood Nutrition Epidemic

loan associations are formed in Philadelphia, letting people of modest means take out what was, in effect, a mortgage.
1833: HOUSING LIGHTENS UP. The first balloon-frame structure goes up in Chicago, an advance over the heavy-timber frames used since medieval times. Allows for cheaper yet more durable homes, made with 2-by-4s and factory-produced nails.
1844: COOL IT. Thomas Masters patents the ice box, an insulated chest to hold blocks of ice. Superseded in the next century by electric refrigerators beginning with the Domelre (domestic electric refrigerator) in 1913.
1854: BUG-FREE ZONES. A patent is taken out for a "mosquito curtain," netting for a sash window. No longer need people face the grim choice of keeping the windows closed and sweating or watching insects beat their last on flypaper. It will take 50 years before wire mesh is mass-produced.
1857: AN IDEA BEFORE ITS TIME. Joseph Gayetty introduces commercially packaged toilet paper, but it doesn't catch on. People think old newspapers and catalogs do an equally fine job, at no extra cost. Finally, in the 1880s, hygiene-conscious Victorians adopt Edward and Clarence Scott's perforated toilet paper.
1858: THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE. Ezra Warner of Connecticut invents the can opener 50 years after the invention of the metal can. It replaces the hammer-and-chisel technique.
1863: FLOORING THE MASSES. Frederick Walton invents a flooring of linseed oil, fillers and cast-off cork shavings that's better than wood, cheaper than tile. Called linoleum, it has a lifetime of 30- plus years and comes in colors.
1869: CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS. Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe publish "The American Woman's Home.'' This volume and its imitators advise middle-class Christian readers how to manage a clean, comfortable household.
1870: STYLE BY THE GALLON. Henry Alden Sherwin and Edward Williams concoct the first ready-mixed paint. The subsequent rush to brush submerges countless hardwood moldings and panels.
1879: BREATHING ROOM. New York City passes laws ensuring that apartment dwellers have access to fresh air and windows. Reformers like Jacob Riis continue to campaign for better conditions, and regulations to be passed in 1901 will mandate minimum room sizes, larger yards, running water and toilets.
1882: ON THE GRID. Thomas Edison contracts with wealthy Manhattanites to provide electricity for their incandescent lamps. Homes cease to be self-sufficient.
1884: REVERSE SNOBBERY. The Dakota on Central Park West is completed. Well-heeled urbanites flock to multiple-unit buildings, previously a working-class thing.
1886: BEYOND THE PAIL. Josephine Cochrane, a socialite living in Illinois, loses patience with servants breaking her china and invents the Cochrane Dishwasher, a precursor to the washers in most homes today.
1889: ORDERING IN. George Barber begins shipping the world's first mass-prefabricated homes by rail from his factory in Knoxville, Tenn. In 1907, Sears, Roebuck will introduce mail-order homes (with plans, paint, materials and nails) from $595 to a $5,000 mansion).
1893: SCIENTIFIC HOME, HAPPY HOME. The National Home Economics Association is founded to teach women how to run their homes more efficiently. It pioneers the science of domestic engineering taught in high schools across the nation.
1901: THE GREAT SUCK-UP. Die, dust bunny, die: H. Cecil Booth patents the first vacuum cleaner, a steam-powered monstrosity that sucks almost anything into its greedy nozzle. Booth was soon wiped out by the portable cleaners W.H. Hoover introduced in 1908.
1917: UNIVERSAL DESIGN. Six American manufacturers settle on a standard appliance plug and socket for electrical power, paving the way for the electrification of the home.
1918: CURE FOR THE CITY SQUEEZE. Lawrence Murphy of San Francisco develops his eponymous bed in response to the housing crunch, superseded by the convertible sofa bed, the Japanese futon and today's inflatable Aero mattress.
1920: THE EARS HAVE IT. Home radios displace the piano and gramophone and become the new focus of family life.
1927: MOBILE NATION. On wheels, for the modern nomad, the Dymaxion House by Buckminster Fuller is the precursor to the less visionary but more affordable mobile homes, Airstreams and the trailer park.
1928: KICK BACK. Edwin Shoemaker and Edward Knobloch build the first La-Z-Boy in a Michigan garage. Shoemaker, 90, recently died while asleep in his invention.
1929: OPEN, SEZ ME. Rudimentary smart-house design: Electric garage door opener makes its debut, found on a post outside the newly invented garage. The hand-held remote will come in the 1960s.
1930s: HOMES ON THE RANGE. Cliff May designs some of the first ranch homes, the future house of choice for families moving to the postwar burbs. Ranch homes were cheap and, as noted, "even a poor architect has a hard time making a spreading, one-story house unattractive."
1932: CANNED AIR. First room air-conditioners go on sale (though most Americans can't afford them), putting the kibosh on the porch.
1939: BAD LIGHTING. Visitors to the World's Fair get their first glimpse of fluorescent lighting, a more energy-efficient means of illumination. Inexplicably, bathrooms across the nation are fitted with the flickering, unflattering lights - and correspondingly, heavy makeup becomes popular.
1945: THE NEW BABY SITTER. Available since 1939, televisions become popular after the war and soon command living rooms as Sunday- afternoon football.
1952: PUSH-BUTTON CUISINE. The Tappan Oven, the first microwave, goes on sale for $1,295 - and home cooking begins its decline as TV dinner sales soar.
1953: PHONE TAG. Bell introduces the first answering machines. Initially popular among doctors, free-lance writers and call girls.
1964: CHEAP CHIC. Terence Conran opens his first Habitat store in London, making modern design swing and displacing Grandma's hand-me- downs. (Scandinavians had been there, done that, with Ikea, by 1950.)
1965: PLAYPENS FOR PLAYBOYS. The water bed is developed - where else? - in California. After it goes on sale in 1970, comfort, decadence and water levels reach new heights.
1968: URBAN RETROFITTING. New York passes the first loft law, encouraging airport hangar dimensions for homes. Artists convert old industrial studios only to lose them to space-hungry yuppies in the 1980s.
1970: PLAYPENS FOR PLAYBOYS, PART 2. Roy Jacuzzi of California develops the Roman Bath, a whirlpool bath for homeowners. He follows it up with the two-person Adonis and backyard hot tubs. Enter Plato's Retreat.
1974: ALL FALL DOWN. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis is demolished after proving a failure. It heralds the beginning of the end for high-rise public housing.
1975: DEATH OF THE TYPEWRITER. First mass-produced home computer, the MITS Altair 8800, goes on the market. Apple markets its own computer the following year, revolutionizing the home office.
1978: RENOVATORS' REVENGE. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, fired from middle-management jobs, open the first Home Depot. A year later, This Old House on PBS kicks off a craze for buying up quaint (a k a decrepit) homes.
1980s: SUBURBAN NATION. A major demographic shift occurs: For the first time in the country's history, the majority of people live in the suburbs.
1990: MARTHA MAKES HER MOVE. The self-proclaimed, self-invented, ambitious mistress of home-how-to starts Martha Stewart Living. And her signature utterance, "It's a good thing," becomes camp scripture.
1999: THE DARK AGES, AGAIN. Our fin-de-siecle hankering for the simple life seems almost medieval: stone walls, coarse fabrics, sleeping platforms, minimalist furniture. All the same, the fascination with simplicity can't disguise the fact that houses are more wired and tech-heavy than ever before. So go on, strip things down to the basics. But whatever you do, don't disconnect the modem.
Document hou0000020010806dw110007w

Once Upon a Time, Only Kings Had Castles

House & Home/Style Desk; Section F

Milestones, Millstones As Design Marches On
By STEPHEN MIHM

4,179 words

30 December 1999

The New York Times

NYTF

Page 1, Column 6

English

(c) 1999 New York Times Company
BY the year 1000, homeowners throughout the world enjoyed a remarkable range of creature comforts: coal stoves in China; crystal tableware in Baghdad; libraries in Ghana. All and all, it wasn't a bad time to be alive -- unless, of course, you lived in Europe. Peasants there dwelt in filthy one-room hovels heated by an open fire. The family, along with the goat, huddled on a single vermin-infested straw mat. Not that kings and queens in gloomy castles had it much better. Privacy was nonexistent, and the nobility, one historian has written, ''didn't so much live in their houses as camp in them.'' They spent most of their time on the road, visiting far-flung estates. Tellingly, the French and Italian words for furniture at this time -- mobilier and mobilia -- meant ''movables.'' It would be a while before Europeans settled down.
1005: TWO-TINING -- Mothers-in-law everywhere quarrel with their sons' wives. But imagine the consternation of the august Venetian lady whose daughter-in-law, a snooty Byzantine princess, refused to eat with her fingers like the rest of the family. She preferred a ''golden instrument with two prongs.'' Her highness died soon thereafter --divine retribution for using a fork.
1066: SAFE, YES; SYBARITIC, HARDLY -- Home security, of sorts, was introduced in England by invading Normans. Donjons, their heavily fortified castle towers, offered protection but no comforts.
C. 1110: TWO RMS, DESERT VIEW -- Pueblo Bonito, built by the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon, is an apartment complex, which eventually encompassed 800 rooms capable of housing 1,000 people. Its size as a multitenant building was not surpassed until 1882.
1165: PLUMBING FIRST, PLUMBERS LATER -- A monastery in Canterbury, England, enjoys a labyrinth of indoor plumbing: pipes, aqueducts, cisterns, reservoirs and a main water tower. But regular bathing remains a curiosity.
1180: LET THERE BE LIGHT -- English homeowners finally rediscover the windowpane, although the Romans had used glass for windows as far back as 14 B.C. Most homes, however, continue to rely on crude wooden shutters and oiled parchment.
1189: SMOKEY THE MAYOR -- In an early example of fire insurance, the first Lord Mayor of London rules that all houses have to be equipped with a ladder and, during tinder-dry summers, a barrel of water by the front door.
C. 1200: ENTER SANTA -- Residential chimneys become common in Europe. Previously, homeowners had built fires in the middle of the floor and cut a hole in the roof to let out smoke and cinders.
1212: FIDDLING WITH THE ROOF -- Heavy duty, low-maintenance tiles replace thatched and wooden roofs in London. Housing becomes more permanent and durable, but repairs are a headache.
C. 1240: BEDS OF STATE -- Henry III of England commissions the first king-size bed, a four poster with a painted canopy, which soon becomes an emblem of nobility throughout Europe.
1255: EARLY WALL-TO-WALL CARPETING -- Eleanor of Castile marries King Edward I of England and begins redecorating, unappreciated, in the colorful, comfortable Moorish style. ''Even the floor was covered with tapestry,'' an observer noted. ''This excessive pride excited the laughter and derision of the people.''
1259: CLEANLINESS, SORT OF -- Soap, a common household item in the Islamic world, is finally manufactured in London. It takes centuries to catch on, as frequent bathing is considered unhealthy (which accounts for the popularity of asphyxiating perfumes). As late as the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I would be considered eccentric for her ''frequent'' -- that is, monthly -- baths.
1300: VANITY -- Glass blowers in Venice craft the first mirrors. Though they cast blurred and distorted images, mirrors gradually became indispensable in the civilized home, culminating centuries later in magazines like Self and US.
1306: KEEPING THE HOME FIRES BURNING -- Marco Polo discovers that the Chinese heat their homes with long-burning, heat-efficient coal. It sure beats manure, fuel of choice in Europe, but it takes a few centuries to catch on.
1492: SWING LOW -- Columbus discovers the New World and, more important, the hammock, a hanging bed used by Caribbean Indians. Adopted aboard Spanish ships, it eventually found a home on the American porch. In time, it begat that instrument of cordial courtship, the porch swing.
1509: ART BY THE YARD -- An artisan makes the first wallpaper -- literally, tacky tapestries -- for use at the master's lodging, Christ College, Cambridge.
C. 1510: A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP -- A French upholsterer devises an improvement to the mattresses of the first half of the millennium, which consisted of little more than straw, leaves, pine needles and a convention of bedbugs. His solution is inflatable: the ''wind bed,'' an early air mattress.
1519: GLITZ -- Cortes conquers the Aztecs and loots their palaces. The conquistadors ship home tons of gold, kicking off a craze for gilt furniture, walls and fixtures unsurpassed until Liberace.
1576: SEE SPOT RUN -- The terrier-powered rotisserie was a fixture of the domestic landscape. ''When any meat is to be roasted,'' a connoisseur of canines wrote, the dogs ''go into a wheel; which they turn round with the weight of their bodies . . . no drudge nor scullion can do the feat more cunningly.'' Popular until era of the A.S.P.C.A.
1581: COORDINATING -- Queen Elizabeth orders one of the first matching sets of furniture: 19 chairs, 6 high stools, 24 square stools and 11 footstools, upholstered in the same material.
1590'S: EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE -- At last, decent storage: The chest of drawers appears in Italy.
1596: ROYAL FLUSH -- Sir John Harington, godson of Elizabeth, installs ''a privy in perfection'' for the queen that features a primitive flush toilet. He later falls out of favor after publishing details of her water closet in the poem ''Metamorphosis of Ajax'' (the title punning on ''a jakes''). It fails to replace the chamber pot.
1600's: COMFORT -- After centuries of making do with straight-back wooden chairs, the English embrace chairs with wings, or lugs, to block out drafts.
1636: BAG, BATH & BEYOND -- Doctor Sanctorius, a physician practicing in Padua, dies before convincing his contemporaries to adopt the ''bag bath,'' a sack filled with water at the neck and voided from a tube at the bather's feet.
1638: A TASTE FOR TCHOTCHKES -- Rise of maitres ebenistes -- furniture makers who make cabinets of curiosities for the upper classes to display newfound collections of manmade and natural oddities, from two-headed cows and platypus bills to microscopic engravings. Housemaids everywhere throw up their dust rags and cheer.
1660's: BAD POSTURE -- The invention of the back stool heralds a new desire for comfort among the hoi polloi, who until now have sat on benches and stools. It later will morph into the side chair.
1687: ROOM WITH A VIEW -- Bernard Perrot of Orleans, France, patents a means of rolling plate glass, spurring the production of full-size windows. The relationship between the inside and the outside of the home is forever changed. Alas, Windex will not be invented until 1936.
1721: FIRST DESIGN QUEEN -- Madame de Pompadour, the future mistress and adviser of Louis XV, born. She will redecorate countless apartments and halls in the neo-Classical style, introducing concepts of privacy, intimacy and comfort that trickle down to the nobility and, eventually, the middle class. It is not known whether she takes a straight commission or charges by the hour.
C.1730: SHADE -- African slaves arriving in the Southern United States build houses fitted with porches. Slaveowners and others quickly adopt the sun-deflecting design to their own homes.
1741: ROBBING THE CRADLE -- First mention of the quintessential American rocking chair, inspired by cradles. Europeans never really got it. When the travel writer Harriet Martineau visited the United States in the 1830's, she could not help wondering ''how this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general.''
1763: BREAK OUT THE DISHES -- Josiah Wedgwood patents his trademark earthenware. It soon becomes the standard domestic pottery in England and abroad. Mass produced and relatively inexpensive, it democratized fine dining and undoubtedly led to the first wedding registries.
1775: THE FLUSH, REDUX -- Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker, patents one of the first practical toilets. It features a cistern overhead, a valve at the base and a ''stink-trap.'' Unfortunately, what goes in must come out. (Sewers were rare.) A curiosity until the next century.
1777: HEAT GETS INTERACTIVE -- Bonnemain, a French architect, installs one of the first central heating systems since Roman times at Chateau de Pecq, with a primitive thermostat to control the flow of air to the boiler.
1792: READING AFTER DARK -- William Murdock in Cornwall, England, lights his home using coal gas. The first gas utility is formed in 1817; by midcentury, most cities had abandoned oil lamps and candles for the unnatural but vastly superior gaslight.
1797: D.I.Y. -- Asher Benjamin pens ''The Country Builder's Assistant,'' one of the first pattern books for homeowners in the United States --design manuals for do-it-yourselfers.
1799: BEHIND THE EARS -- Elizabeth Drinker of Philadelphia writes of the family's innovative ''shower bath,'' noting ''I bore it better than expected, not having been wett all over att once, for 28 years past.'' Regular showers remained a novelty until the mid-1800's.
1804: COMMON CHARGES -- The French Civil Code grants a person the right to own a building or part of a building on land that he or she does not own: the legal foundation of condominium ownership.
1820's: ALUMINUM CHIC -- A craze develops among nobles for aluminum plates and cutlery. Until chemists discovered how to produce aluminum cheaply and efficiently, it was the must-have metal, selling for $600 a pound (more expensive than gold).
1826: FIRST EJECTOR SEAT -- One of the first mentions of spiral-spring furniture, ruining posture once and for all as sitters lounge in what the French called the fauteuil comfortable. Provided, of course, the sharp, metal springs didn't poke through and impale the sitter (a common event).
1830: NO WORK FOR SHEEP -- Edwin Beard Budding invents the lawnmower. Americans, especially, become obsessed with lawns, and by 1870, the detached home with a manicured yard is desirable, thanks to the proselytizing of landscape architects. Nature becomes something to contemplate, not fear. And children's allowances are never the same again.
1831: DOMESTIC DEBT -- The first building and loan associations are formed in Philadelphia, letting people of modest means take out what was, in effect, a mortgage.
1833: HOUSING LIGHTENS UP -- The first balloon-frame structure goes up in Chicago, an advance over the heavy-timber frames used since medieval times. Allows for cheaper yet more durable homes, made with 2-by-4's and factory-produced nails.
1844: COOL IT -- Thomas Masters patents the ice box, an insulated chest to hold blocks of ice. Superseded in the next century by electric refrigerators beginning with the Domelre (domestic electric refrigerator) in 1913.
1848: NOT FOR SQUARES -- Orson Fowler, a phrenologist and spiritualist, publishes ''A Home for All,'' touting the octagon as a source of health, efficiency and mystical powers. Thousands of eight-sided homes are built in the United States before the fever runs its course and homeowners lose their tempers over a lack of square, functional rooms.
1854: BUG-FREE ZONES -- A patent is taken out for a ''mosquito curtain,'' netting for a sash window. No longer need people face the grim choice of keeping the windows closed and sweating or watching insects beat their last on flypaper. It will take 50 years before wire mesh is mass-produced.
1857: AN IDEA BEFORE ITS TIME -- Joseph Gayetty introduces commercially packaged toilet paper, but it doesn't catch on. People think old newspapers and catalogues do an equally fine job, at no extra cost. Finally, in the 1880's, hygiene-conscious Victorians adopt Edward and Clarence Scott's perforated toilet paper.
1858: THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE -- Ezra Warner of Connecticut invents the can opener 50 years after the invention of the metal can. It replaces the hammer-and-chisel technique.
1863: FLOORING THE MASSES -- Frederick Walton invents a flooring of linseed oil, fillers and cast-off cork shavings that's better than wood, cheaper than tile. Called linoleum, it has a lifetime of 30-plus years and comes in colors. The combination of ingredients happen to have antibiotic properties, too, which will make it popular in nurseries, kitchens and bathrooms.
1866: MUSIC TO BATHE BY -- Victorians love folding furniture, but the piano bed takes the prize. The piano unfolds to reveal a writing table, chest of drawers, bed, two cupboards for bed linen and a wash basin with jug and towel rail. Advertisements helpfully note that ''It has been found by actual use that this addition to a pianoforte does not in the least impair its qualities as a musical instrument.'' Still, a convertible piano has never graced the stage of Carnegie Hall.
1869: CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS -- Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe publish ''The American Woman's Home.'' This volume and its imitators advise middle-class Christian readers how to manage a clean, comfortable household.
1870: STYLE BY THE GALLON -- Henry Alden Sherwin and Edward Williams concoct the first ready-mixed paint. The subsequent rush to brush submerges countless hardwood moldings and panels.
1878: CLEAN AND FIT, ALL AT ONCE -- Scientific American describes a shower in which the bather jogs up and down, fueling a treadmill to keep water circulating. Almost as absurd as a bicycle shower, the ''Velo-douche.''
1879: BREATHING ROOM -- New York City passes laws ensuring that apartment dwellers have access to fresh air and windows. Reformers like Jacob Riis continue to campaign for better conditions, and regulations to be passed in 1901 will mandate minimum room sizes, larger yards, running water and toilets.
1882: ON THE GRID -- Thomas Edison contracts with wealthy Manhattanites to provide electricity for their incandescent lamps. Homes cease to be self-sufficient.
1884: REVERSE SNOBBERY -- The Dakota on Central Park West is completed. Well-heeled urbanites flock to multiple-unit buildings, previously a working-class thing.
1886: BEYOND THE PAIL -- Josephine Cochrane, a socialite living in Illinois, loses patience with servants breaking her china and invents the Cochrane Dishwasher, a precursor to the washers in most homes today. 1889: ORDERING IN -- George Barber begins shipping the world's first mass-prefabricated homes by rail from his factory in Knoxville, Tenn. In 1907, Sears, Roebuck will introduce mail-order homes (with plans, paint, materials and nails) from $595 to a $5,000 mansion).
1893: FIRM BUTTOCKS IN A HALF-HOUR -- Exercising at home becomes increasingly acceptable. In Germany, Friederich Mayer's climbing machine, complete with a mask and mouthpiece, is the first home stairmaster to simulate high-altitudes.
1893: SCIENTIFIC HOME = HAPPY HOME -- National Home Economics Association is founded to teach women how to run their homes more efficiently. It pioneers the science of domestic engineering taught in high schools across the nation.
1901: THE GREAT SUCK-UP -- Die, dust bunny, die: H. Cecil Booth patents the first vacuum cleaner, a steam-powered monstrosity that sucks almost anything into its greedy nozzle. Upper-class women throw tea parties to celebrate the arrival of the men from ''BVC.'' Booth was soon wiped out by the portable cleaners W. H. Hoover introduced in 1908.
1917: UNIVERSAL DESIGN -- Six American manufacturers settle on a standard appliance plug and socket for electrical power, paving the way for the electrification of the home.
1918: CURE FOR THE CITY SQUEEZE -- Lawrence Murphy of San Francisco develops his eponymous bed in response to the housing crunch. It will superseded by the convertible sofa bed, the Japanese futon and today's inflatable Aero mattress.
1920: THE EARS HAVE IT -- Home radios displace the piano and gramophone and become the new focus of family life.
1927: MOBILE NATION -- On wheels, for the modern nomad, the Dymaxion House by Buckminster Fuller is the precursor to the less visionary but more affordable mobile homes, Airstreams and the trailer park.
1928: KICK BACK -- Edwin Shoemaker and Edward Knobloch build the first La-Z-Boy in a Michigan garage. Shoemaker, 90, recently died while asleep in his invention.
1929: OPEN, SEZ ME -- Rudimentary smart-house design: Electric garage door opener makes its debut, found on a post outside the newly invented garage. The hand-held remote will come in the 1960's.
1930's: HOMES ON THE RANGE -- Cliff May designs some of the first ranch homes, the future house of choice for families moving to the postwar burbs. Ranch homes were cheap, and as noted, ''even a poor architect has a hard time making a spreading, one-story house unattractive.''
1932: CANNED AIR -- First room air-conditioners go on sale (though most Americans can't afford them), putting the kebosh on the porch.
1939: BAD LIGHTING -- Visitors to the World's Fair get their first glimpse of fluorescent lighting, a more energy-efficient means of illumination. Inexplicably, bathrooms across the nation are fitted with the flickering, unflattering lights -- and correspondingly, heavy makeup becomes popular.
1945: THE NEW BABY SITTER -- Available since 1939, televisions become popular after the war and soon command living rooms as men discover the natural link between La-Z-Boy recliners and Sunday-afternoon football.
1946: LEAVE IT TO LEVITT -- William Levitt begins building his eponymous town on Long Island potato fields, using prefab parts and an assembly-line process, with radiant-floor heating, built-in television sets, tiled baths and a ''modern kitchen.'' Cost: $7,900 or $56 a month for homecoming G.I.'s.
1952: PUSH-BUTTON CUISINE -- The Tappan Oven, the first microwave, goes on sale for $1,295 -- and home cooking begins its decline as TV dinner sales soar.
1953: PHONE TAG -- Bell introduces the first answering machines. Initially popular among doctors, freelance writers and call girls.
1964: CHEAP CHIC -- Terence Conran opens his first Habitat store in London, making modern design swing and displacing Grandma's hand-me-downs. (Scandinavians had been there, done that, with Ikea, by 1950.)
1964: POSTMODERN MAMA -- Robert Venturi designs a home for his mother, Vanna, that rejects the stark functionalism and open floor plans of the modern home in favor of a richer, more allusive -- ''postmodern'' -- architecture.
1965: PLAYPENS FOR PLAYBOYS -- The water bed is developed -- where else? -- in California. After it goes on sale in 1970, comfort, decadence and water level reach new heights.
1967: CHAIR OR PERSONAL FLOTATION DEVICE? -- Italian designers produce the transparent blow chair, the first inflatable furniture. Beanbag chairs follow. Chiropractors can hardly wait.
1968: URBAN RETROFITTING -- New York passes the first loft law, encouraging airport hangar dimensions for homes. Artists convert old industrial studios only to lose them to space-hungry yuppies in the 1980's.
1970: PLAYPENS FOR PLAYBOYS, PART 2 -- Roy Jacuzzi of California develops the Roman Bath, a whirlpool bath for homeowners. He follows it up with the two-person Adonis and backyard hot tubs. Enter Plato's Retreat.
1973: YOU CAN'T BE TOO RICH OR HAVE TOO MANY WINDOWS -- Robert A. M. Stern designs his famous home in Westchester. The nouveaux riches quickly anoint him as the homebuilder of choice; postmodern pastiches infest neighborhoods everywhere.
1974: ALL FALL DOWN -- The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis is demolished after proving a failure. It heralds the beginning of the end for high-rise public housing.
1975: DEATH OF THE TYPEWRITER -- First mass-produced home computer, the MITS Altair 8800, goes on the market. Apple markets its own computer the following year, revolutionizing the home office.
1978: RENOVATORS' REVENGE -- Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, fired from middle-management jobs, open the first Home Depot. A year later, ''This Old House'' on PBS kicks off a craze for buying up quaint (a k a decrepit) homes. Coincidence? We don't think so.
1980'S: SUBURBAN NATION -- A major demographic shift occurs: for the first time in the country's history, the majority of people live in the suburbs.
1986: ADOBE, ANYONE? -- Rizzoli publishes ''Santa Fe Style,'' fueling a run on striped rugs, buckskins and bad, pepto-dismal colored plaster jobs.
1990: ERGO, OXO -- The rise of ergonomic design yields the Good Grips vegetable peeler by Oxo International for the arthritic or merely clumsy, with its trademark oversize handle.
1990: MARTHA MAKES HER MOVE -- The self-proclaimed, self-invented, ambitious mistress of home-how-to starts Martha Stewart Living. And her signature utterance, ''It's a good thing,'' becomes camp scripture.
1999: THE DARK AGES, AGAIN -- Our fin-de-siecle hankering for the simple life seems almost medieval: stone walls, coarse fabrics, sleeping platforms, minimalist furniture. Time Inc. is starting Real Simple, a magazine aimed at women seeking a more spartan (read: Shaker) lifestyle than Ms. Stewart can deliver. All the same, the fascination with simplicity can't disguise the fact that houses are more wired and tech-heavy than ever before. So go on, strip things down to the basics. But whatever you do, don't disconnect the modem.
CREATURE COMFORTS (1492-1741)
THE Renaissance gave rise to new notions of house and home. Rooms arose with strictly defined functions for sleeping, eating and socializing. Locks and interior doors became common, signaling a desire for privacy. Increasingly, the home became a sanctuary from the world outside, so much so that a visitor to Delft, in the Netherlands, marveled in 1665 that ''in many houses, as in the holy places of the heathens, it is not permissible to ascend the stairs or set foot in a room without first removing one's shoes.'' Craftsmen in Persia, India and China jump-started the taste for fine furnishings in Europe with trendy rugs, porcelain and other luxury goods. By the late 18th century, new kinds of furniture became popular, too: drop-leaf tables, corner cupboards, china cabinets. Many of these pieces were lacquered or featured veneers and inlays, a testament to renewed contact with Asia and the rise of the bourgeoisie. Royalty no longer had a monopoly on comfort and luxury.
ALL THE MODERN CONVENIENCES (1763-1893)
THE Industrial Revolution did more than transform the economy: it irrevocably changed the way people lived. A surfeit of cheap mass-produced housewares came within reach of the bourgeoisie. Wills show that many upper-middle-class households had upward of 600 towels and pieces of linen. People in Europe and the United States went from living in crude candlelit dwellings, warmed with open fires, to spacious homes with indoor plumbing, central heating and electricity. Rooms quickly filled up with tokens of the new prosperity: upholstered furniture, down mattresses, heavy curtains and arrays of useless bric-a-brac. The era gave rise to stylistic chaos, as designers churned out objects ''inspired'' by Egyptian, Oriental and Moorish traditions. The Victorians encased inventions like telephones, gas lamps and radiators in Gothic packaging, softening the blow as technology entered the home. Such excesses bowed, inevitably, to the clean lines and functionalism of modern design.
BACK TO THE FUTURE (1893-1999)
LIFE'S dramas -- birth and death, especially -- moved out of the home and into the hospital. But while the average home ceased to be the setting for such rituals, it became a showcase for technological sophistication: computers; exotic materials like reinforced concrete, plastic and plywood; and irresistible labor-saving devices. In stylish circles, it also became a staging ground for modern designs as varied as Frank Lloyd Wright's creations and the boxy functionalism of Bauhaus. Never mind that Wright's flat roofs leaked, or that Marcel Breuer's chairs made you fidget: they fixed your gaze on the future. Pop's playfulness dominated in the 60's; in the 80's postmodernism winked at the past. But at the end of the century, all that seems like an interregnum. Modernism reigns again.
Photos: JOG BATH -- A pedal-powered shower, 1878. (Bettmann Corbis)(F1); HEARING VOICES -- America lends its ear to the radio, 1924. (The New York Times); ICE DREAM -- The one and only air-conditioned bed, 1935, was designed to operate with the bedroom windows left open. (The New York Times); THE NEW STONE AGE -- 800-pound tub by Clodagh, 1998. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times); TULIPMANIA -- Tulip chair, 1956, by Eero Saarinen, was modern and ''mod.'' Its stem became a 60's design standard. (Knoll Archives, New York); QUINZE DO -- Madame de Pompadour, Louis's decorator. (Francis G. Mayer/Corbis); A STAB AT COMFORT -- Spiral-spring seating, 1826. (Bettmann/Corbis)(pg. F7); IN HOT WATER -- An Italian bag-bath, 1636. (From ''Clean and Decent'' by Lawrence Wright (University of Toronto Press, 1960); APT. AVAIL. -- Pueblo Bonito, multifamily dwelling, 1110. (David Muench/Corbis); BARK & BASTE -- A dog-driven rotisserie, 1576. The dog ran in a belted turbine, right, that turned the spit. (From ''Home Comfort: A History of Domestic Arrangements'' by Christina Hardyment [Academy Chicago Publishers, 1992]); DIPLO-MATS -- Rich rugs help ''carpet knights'' forge treaty, 1604. (Nick Bagguley/Freud Museum Collection)(pg. F6); Drawings (Leslie Cober-Gentry)(pg. F6-F7)
Document nytf000020010828dvcu01yn7
Ghosts of schooldays past.
By Bill Jones.

2,037 words

2 October 1999

Birmingham Post

BMP

50

English

(c) 1999 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd
Bill Jones joins other grey-tops to revisit his old school after more
September, and we gathered in nervous awe in the yard beneath the shadow of the formidable tower-topped buildings. Was this really the school that stood in the throbbing iron heart of England? Was this the place to learn to never mind a kick on the shin? Or was it a formidable fortress of gloomy corridors and harsher discipline?
These were the feelings I found myself recalling nearly half a century after I had first entered through the memorial arch as first year Sherrin. Then we came together from across the city - and beyond - to become Camp Hill boys for the first time, unaware of the great history of the school and innocent of how we would add, or detract, from those glories.
But this time instead of crisp new school caps, the throng in the yard showed grey on the heads which had not yet surrendered the right to grow. And although movement was more sedate, the eyes were just as bright and sharp as they had been as we waited to be summoned inside once more.
For this was the first visit to the "old school" by past pupils organised by the newly resurrected Camp Hill Old Edwardians Association.
And most of the 30 or so veterans who made the trip that evening were coming back for the first time in several decades to revisit the place which had played such a key role in forming our later lives.
While we waited we checked to see if the monkey hole was still there. It was, plunging down the side of the woodwork room still ready to receive newcomers for their initiation. And so, too, was the fives court - not available for action because it housed a garden shed. Perhaps we could call a "let" if the shed got in the way!
There is now a large building taking up a big percentage of the area where the major lunchtime and after school football matches were fought out. But the biggest difference was that the wall that sheltered us from the sins of seeing our sister pupils at play was now gone. Had the efforts of generations of boys chipping away at the mortar finally achieved a great triumph similar to that of Berlin?
There was no "Mighty" Joe Young, with ill-fitting smock, to toll the bell and summon us inside - just Ken Birrell with a clipboard and incisive comment.
Through the door which had opened on to the staircase to the art room and the corridor to the science block, no staircase, just a reception office for the community group which now owns the building.
The stairs had "mysteriously disappeared" during renovation work and current conversion work is turning most of that wing into accommodation for conference delegates. Not a good start - but the evening got better, much better. We turned right up the corridor past where Miss Jacks had had her office and "Sos" Hollingsworth kept his eye on stationery stocks and where the house notice boards had adorned the walls.
Now the flashbacks began. To the right was the corridor running past the staff room - with its Toc H lamp - and the headmaster's study where the call of "come" from TFR could create a flow of brown adrenaline in even the most guilt-free of young men.
To the left the stairs fell away to where the subterranean dining room had been. The cell-like area is now sealed off with a vending machine. That meant we couldn't resume the scrummaging practice that was a daily ritual as sittings one to four scrambled for places on splintered wooden benches and tables to consume swede, boiled cabbage and potato which tasted as if it had been compounded from products scraped from the timber yard across the road.
The stairs took us past the office once jointly occupied by the twin terrors of torture, Jan Slade and David James, when they were in charge of PE. On then up to the first floor where Jim Ridsdale had inherited the geography room from Taffy Davies on one side. On the other the changing room and classroom are now female toilets - but the hall still has a stage.
Not the formidable platform from which Polly Bates kept stern order until the arrival of the head for morning assembly. Nor, in this multi-cultural centre, is there a lectern from which the prefects intoned the day's Bible reading.
But there is a stage, and there is still an atmosphere as if the thousands of young men who had heartily joined in the end-of-term singing, had somehow managed to embed their souls into the high timbered roof.
The brown paint has gone, but the brackets which once held the honours boards are still there, as are the arched windows which somehow managed to survive the daily gym sessions that included the vigorous use of rugby and medicine balls by Messrs Slade and James. And how did we, who had classrooms off that hall, manage to cope with the noise and distractions outside the door? Perhaps we didn't.
Then at the end of the hall a place where many of us had never been. The room which had been the sanctuary of the upper sixth - the elite, the boys who shaved, didn't have to wear uniform and were bigger and stronger than our dads. Entry to that domain was once a special privilege, but now it is a computer area and the views from the windows of the tower not only provide extraordinary vantage points across the playground and half the city, but let in light for today's IT students.
Time now for talk and the recall of names and events - Geoff Saunders, Bill Drysdale, Flossy Phelps, Spud Kobler, Tony Appleby, Howe, Hunt, Marsden, Titt, Thomas and Thomas, Buckley, Doubleday, Brown et al.
There among the crowd were faces, familiar and otherwise. Some of us have weathered better than others - but none appear to have lost the love of a time that might have been long ago, but is still precious.
I was present in the final school assembly that July day when we said good bye to Camp Hill and moved our tent to Kings Heath.
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but the old place - even though it has had many tenants since the mid '50s - is still the same. A few new walls and a lick of paint can't disguise a treasure.
Look forward to going back again - but I can't wait another 40 odd years.
FOREIGN FRESHERS
Singapore, Israel, China, Ghana, Seychelles and Sri Lanka. These are some of the countries joining Birmingham's student population every year.
At the University of Central England, six foreign students are trying to fit in and find their feet. More than 700 overseas students make up UCE's 25,000 population.
For most of them, moving to Birmingham means a three-year financial commitment. "There is a lot of money involved for fees, accommodation and travel," said the director of International Affairs, Nicole Harper.
"There is an incredible amount of pressure to do well because of the investment involved. They've got the whole family's hopes on their shoulders. Being a foreign student takes a lot of enthusiasm and motivation."
But if this worry is sitting at the back of their minds, UCE tries very hard to cajole their international intake into the relaxed side of the student lifestyle during freshers' week.
UCE's extensive welcome to foreign students includes picking them up from the airport or train station when they arrive, arranged shopping trips into the city centre and evenings out to the local pubs.
They must also take a test in English, even if they have been educated through a British system to gauge their language skills.
Christina Appiah-Korang, aged 28, is studying a degree in International Business Management and will be in Birmingham for three years.
"I was very depressed on the first day but I later made some friends so I felt OK." A quietly-spoken young woman, she is wearing a very new-looking polo neck. "I miss the weather and I miss home." It is the first time she has left Ghana.
Michelle Lafortune, aged 21, has come from the Seychelles to study a degree in Business Administration with Human Resource Management. "It's so different from home, of course, because I've come from a tropical island. At first I found it dark and depressing and I was homesick.
"I'm going to have to control my urge to phone home. I think I need to make friends quickly but I'm a bit shy."
Talking is something Loiselyn Chan, from Singapore has no problem with. The smiley 26-year-old is taking a final year in Business Administration with Marketing. "My family do expect me to have a good degree. I saved some money because I worked before but my father is mainly supporting me.
"However, I am looking forward to being a student again and improving my English. And the shops in Birmingham look really good."
Himanga Hewawasam, is the youngest of the group at 20 and is about to embark on a three-year Marketing with French degree. "Studying in England is highly regarded but the country is different to how I imagined it. I found the accent difficult to understand and something I've noticed about the English is their haircuts. They have very unusual ones."
Chang Su, aged 25, from China is a qualified fashion designer but she wants to study Business Administration to understand the financial side of fashion.
"I hope one day to set up my own company but there is no point being a fashion designer if you have no business sense," she said. She has already decided she does not like English food. "I cannot eat it. I have to make my own," she said.
Nofrat Porat, from Israel, is 23 and has graduated from a European University in Brussels to take an extra year at UCE.
"I wanted to meet new people and learn more about other cultures," she said. "But I am a bit worried because I don't know what expectations there are academically.
"I had heard about Birmingham before but it was not positive," she says smiling. "I heard only bad stuff, that it was an industrial city, but the city centre is really nice, especially Victoria Square."
ASTON AUNTIES
In those initial unsettling weeks and months at university when everything is so new and strange, who do students miss the most - mum, dad, siblings?
Since you cannot take them with you Aston University has come up with the next best thing.
Will an auntie do instead? It is never going to mean the same as having the comforting support of your own family. But more than 150 Aston Aunties are on hand from the start of fresher's week to ensure first year undergraduates have got someone to turn to.
"The aunties are second and final year students who voluntarily give up the last week of their summer break to help first years settle into university life," said Aston University's marketing officer Steven Proud.
"Having been there before themselves, they are the best equipped to offer advice or answer any questions. If the newcomers feel homesick or get lost in Birmingham, then auntie will be there to sort it out. In fact auntie will be there from the very start to help out with everything from unpacking the car to making sure everyone has the best possible time during Freshers' Week."
Aston University claims to have pioneered the idea 25 years ago and it has since been widely copied. Steven says the university has no problems recruiting another crop of aunties each year.
Being a fresher might be unsettling, but it is also one of the best times to be at university. Who can blame undergraduates for wanting to relive it, just a little bit.
Copyright Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd, 1999.
Document bmp0000020010901dva200azv

EDITORIAL

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

1,209 words

16 September 1999

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

SLMO

EDITION: FIVE STAR LIFT

PAGE: B6

English

Copyright 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. All Rights Reserved.
It's time to rethink MetroLink extension
Recent reports indicate that the staff of the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council is having second thoughts about the cost of extending MetroLink to Shrewsbury.
The cost of $53.9 million per mile seems excessive and would certainly warrant study of an alternative that we -- former Clayton mayors -- and other community leaders are proposing. On June 7, we wrote a letter to each director of the East-West Gateway Council in which we stated:
"The $350 million plan of the Missouri Department of Transportation to rebuild Highway 40/64 from Tower Grove to Spoede Road gives cause to rethink a previously rejected option."
Highway 40 reconstruction and MetroLink routing along the highway would be far more economical than the current plan. This routing, which would use mostly existing surface rights of way, would serve more citizens and undoubtedly cost many millions of dollars less.
If the state of Missouri is going to spend $350 million and the Gateway Coordinating Council more than $400 million, simple logic would seem to dictate that these two agencies ought to combine design, engineering and construction costs.
We venture to suggest that many millions of dollars would be saved, more people served and far less disruption ensue than in the current plan.
Simple prudence would seem to indicate a necessity for further study and a demand for cooperation between these two agencies of government. Hunt Benoist
James Laflin
Hugh Scott, III
Richard Stith
Hy A. Waltuch
Former mayors
Clayton
Dowd's political role
How disappointing to learn that the first assistant chosen by former Sen. John Danforth for the inquiry into the Branch Davidians' death in Waco is Edward Dowd.
Isn't Dowd the U.S. attorney who this year sent letters and materials opposing the state concealed-carry referendum on Justice Department stationery at taxpayer expense to numerous state politicians and law-enforcement officials?
In doing so, Dowd showed his willingness to break departmental rules to accomplish a political goal. He also demonstrated a philosophical belief that the government should have a monopoly on deadly force.
Are we now to believe that Dowd will take a hard look at this episode and its aftermath?
John Holds
Clayton
Swift executions
I agree with the concern voiced in the Sept. 12 editorial, "Compassionate killing," regarding swift executions.
To cite Karla Faye Tucker as "one of those on the receiving end of [George W.] Bush's compassionately conservative executions," however, is a bit much.
The "slow, uncertain path of the bleeding heart" may indeed help to protect the innocent. But must you bring into the picture someone who admittedly showed no compassion to the victim who was on the receiving end of her pickax?
Don J. Smith
St. Charles
Regarding the Sept. 12 editorial on George W. Bush, I am astonished that you would use the phrase, "he was reported to have mocked" a killer's plea for mercy. This is no less than substituting that phrase for "it was rumored that he."
If Bush said it, then quote a reputable source. If it is an unsubstantiated rumor, then why give it life? Where is your journalistic integrity?
Dwight A. Warren
High Ridge
My Catholic parish has spent an awful lot of energy encouraging its parishioners to support the partial-birth abortion override. This has been done through pulpit announcements, bulletins and pro-life organization newsletters.
Meanwhile, I heard not a peep from anyone in my parish about opposing David Leisure's execution, and now he's dead. How soon we forget that the pope himself, only eight months ago in our town, implored us to save the lives of those on death row, not just the unborn.
Wasn't anybody listening?
Julie Kelemen
St. Louis
U.S. self-interest
Charles Krauthammer's Sept. 8 column, "Albanians push self-interest, denigrate the West," should be required reading for members of the State Department. It should also be required reading for all political science students in the United States.
Any country, including the United States, has to put its interests before any other country's interest if it is to survive. The present administration has to base its policies on "the way things really are" instead of "the way we wish it could be."
The United States has many enemies in the world, and it would be refreshing if President Bill Clinton and the State Department could spot one.
Jim Thomasson
Osage Beach, Mo.
We should go to East Timor after we straighten out Angola, South Africa, Bangladesh, Burma, Bosnia, Cyprus, Cuba, Colombia, China, Congo, Cambodia, Eritrea, Greece, Ghana, Ethiopia, the Hutus and the Tutsis, India, Ireland, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Korea, Karastan, Kosovo, the Kurds, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Panama, Russia, Rwanda, Turkey, Tibet, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Vietnam and Zimbabwa -- to name a few of the hot spots.
Curt Owen
Clarksville, Mo.
Strong language
I agree with Judith Newmark's Sept. 12 review about the language of "Book of Days" in its effect on people's opinions and minds. However, the filth that was delivered on the Repertory Theater stage Sept. 9 was uncalled for.
This was no standing ovation, no curtain calls and certainly no "bravo."
The actors did a fine job with what they had to work with. They must have had to wash out their minds and mouths with soap before sleeping.
T.M. Ryan
Kirkwood
Group seeks to lure technology companies
I appreciate your informing the public about technology development in St. Louis. At the Center for Emerging Technologies, we work with start-up, advanced technology companies. Those companies are developing n ext-generation technologies in the areas of biotechnology, medical instruments, medical devices, plant sciences and advanced telecommunications.
These companies are developing patentable technology that will be marketed on a global scale. St. Louis has all of the resources necessary to support the development of technology-based companies. However, if we are to create technology companies out of local technology advances or attract companies from elsewhere, we need to improve our ability to capitalize on those resources.
We have an active coalition led by the Technology Gateway Alliance, to develop of seed and early-stage capital. That effort has been greatly assisted by targeted state tax credits. St. Louis now has a formal Angel Network, and we are planning an InvestMidwest Venture Forum for next spring. A seed capital fund, using $20 million in state tax credits, is in the works.
One area that still needs to be addressed is the limited amount of commercial space designed to accommodate the needs of technology companies, whether biotechnology or information technology. This is especially true within the city of St. Louis.
The Center for Emerging Technologies has organized a planning group to look at creating Technopolis St. Louis -- a technology city within the city -- to attract and retain technology companies to the Midtown area between the Washington University Medical Center and St. Louis University.
When our companies outgrow our incubator, we would like them to relocate to attractive commercial space close by.
We will all benefit from the enhanced economy that comes as a result of fostering technology-based economic development.
Marcia Mellitz
President
Center for Emerging Technologies
St. Louis
Document SLMO000020040605dv9g010jl
COMPONENTS/SYSTEMS SERVICE COMPANIES

COMPONENTS/SYSTEMS SERVICE COMPANIES

21,748 words

1 August 1999

Overhaul & Maintainence

OVMT

103

Vol. V, No. 6

English

(c) 1999 McGraw-Hill, Inc.

COMPONENTS/SYSTEMS SERVICE COMPANIES

The Americas

A&S Helicopters Inc.

Steven Bortscheller, Owner & Pres.

17 Omni Dr., Cahokia, IL 62206