Most of the restaurant kitchens I have worked in have been outfitted with Vulcan gas appliances. Vulcan equipment is the backbone of every commercial kitchen lucky enough to have them installed. All my Vulcan appliances have been more than 10 years old, and they wore their age very well. Vulcan won another "Best in Class" professional award in 2015. They're very easy to operate. There is a certain feel to them; every aspect of their (Vulcan Professional) design is rock-solid. They rarely need maintenance or adjustments, and they cause many cooks to overlook their reliability day after day. I actually find it difficult to convey how much respect and gratitude I have for quiet, hardworking Vulcan gas appliances.

What a great photo, with a lot of clues to what sort of person Mrs. Compton was. In 1920, kitchens that were clean by today's standards weren't common; permanent, sanitary surfaces were beyond many people's means, and modern detergents hadn't been invented yet. Cleaning kitchen grease meant lots of hand-wrecking scrubbing with sal soda and other harsh cleaning products. Mrs. Compton seems to have been very concerned with sanitation; her kitchen is painted in scrubbable gloss enamel, and her floor is an expensive embossed linoleum. Her back door - which deliverymen and servants would have used frequently - has hardware cloth over the screen on its lower half, to prevent the screen becoming holed and torn, letting flies in. The dotted muslin curtains are fresh, the woodwork has no fingermarks, and the stove is nicely polished, with a clean teakettle and percolator as testament to how much Mrs. Compton cared. While I doubt the lady did all this herself (this is the house of someone who could afford servants and knew how to supervise them), she definitely had housekeeping high on her list of priorities. I like to think she'd be very pleased to know that we noticed.

In reading the comments on so many of Shorpy's old pictures, I notice there are two opposing schools of thought that always crop up. Some viewers favor total restoration of period interiors right down to the knickknacks while others want to remodel everything to be current, new, futuristic. I prefer leaving my home exactly as it was originally built, decorated and furnished. Yeah, the 70's were an ugly era, my son says that coming to my house is like walking onto the set of "Rhoda" (while he hums the theme song). Still if you look at atrocities like what was done to Penn Station vs how they restored Grand Central, I'm keeping mine intact, even with the orange happyface light fixture, olive green appliances and gold shag carpet. And I'm keeping my white belt and matching shoes that go with the yellow polyester knit bellbottoms.

Washington Post, May 31, 1918

Kitchen Contentment

The up-to-date housekeeper appreciates the saving of steps in the kitchen afforded by modern, compact equipment.

A kitchen joy in particular is the one type Vulcan gas range, which has a smooth top similar to a coal stove, with no openings below for pots to tip over into. The whole top is usable for cooking, without waste of heat. Prices, $30 up.

Dulin & Martin Co.

(click to enlarge)

It's not that difficult, but it's good to keep in mind that a lot of stoves from the 1920s and later contain asbestos insulation. I wouldn't recommend that anyone remove that insulation themselves, although lots of people have: I did when I had to have my boiler replaced (it would have cost $3,000 to have it done professionally and taken three weeks, and I couldn't be without heat for three weeks in the middle of a Winnipeg winter).

There are tons of websites out there that give tips on restoring antique stoves. When we restored ours at our old house, it took us a few weeks. We removed the rust with WD40 - spray it on, let it sit, and wipe it off. Easiest part of the job. Hardest was the welding, which I did not do.

That is a pretty small stove and oven (and broiler), and it may even be a conversion, as the drop in plates are the kind found in wood stoves. Pretty shallow for that though. Those ranges can be refurbished, but it gets pretty expensive. My sister bought a refurbished one more like the one in the White House kitchen photos, and it cost her over $10,000. Beautiful thing, though.

I think the "tile" is actually Linoleum. We had nearly the exact thing in my parents' house bought in 1941.

There's a hulk of a Vulcan stove in my c. 1920 home, someone thought a Frigidaire all-electric range was the way to go in the 1960's. I wonder how one would restore one of these beauties...

I, too, love the tile. Does anyone know when this home was built?

There is one of those kettles in my grandmother's old kitchen right now.

The perky kitty thing in the window is marvelous. Nice tile motif as well.