Race to Save the Last Frankfurt Kitchens, 100 Years On

At least 10,000 Frankfurt Kitchens were installed in the city's housing estates beginning in 1926. Most have been discarded or remodeled out of existence. Now a 23-year-old nonprofit, the Ernst-May-Gesellschaft, races to save the survivors with slotted screwdrivers, chisels and hammers.

The call arrives with a deadline. An apartment in one of Frankfurt's 1920s estates faces renovation, and its original fitted kitchen is scheduled for removal. Volunteers may have only days before the room disappears for good.

"Every contemporary kitchen is based on the DNA of the Frankfurt Kitchen," says Laura Gerlach, whose photographic archive, The Library of Frankfurt Kitchens, has been exhibited at the society's show house. "The Frankfurt Kitchen marked a turning point in architecture and in the concept of living and radically scrutinized and rethought the idea of housework. It's what we mean when we say 'kitchen.'"

Who designed it, and why?

In 1925, Frankfurt's mayor appointed architect Ernst May as city building councilor and tasked him with solving the post-World War I housing shortage. That program became Neues Frankfurt. May's team included Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, one of Austria's first practicing female architects, who had already studied in Vienna how architecture might lessen women's domestic workload.

May charged her with devising a prefabricated, space-efficient kitchen. "The idea was to minimize the number of steps they took, say between peeling the potato and the oven, ostensibly freeing up their time for other pursuits outside the house," explains Staci Steinberger, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA recently acquired a Frankfurt Kitchen, now on view in "The Kitchen and Its Discontents."

Viennese architect Christine Zwingl, the leading expert on Schütte-Lihotzky, calls the kitchen "a design by a woman, a contribution to women's emancipation, and a piece of women's history."

What made the design radical?

The kitchen measured just 6.2 by 11.3 feet. Every inch had a purpose.

• Dishes drained on shelves above the sink.
• Scraps swept into a removable ventilated drawer.
• An ironing board folded down beneath an adjustable ceiling lamp.
• Labeled aluminum bins for flour and sugar, each with handle and pouring spout, slotted into a wall-mounted cubby.
• An electric stove replaced soot-stained wood-burning ranges.

Influenced by railway dining cars and Taylorism, Schütte-Lihotzky arranged counters, cabinets, stoves and sinks in assembly-line fashion. Linoleum floors and tiled backsplashes simplified cleaning. The original blue color was thought to repel flies. "It made cooking and cleaning easier," Steinberger says, though the design "didn't change who was doing the work."

The kitchen traveled. In 1927, photographs appeared in the Swiss journal Das Werk. Three years later, Schütte-Lihotzky joined May's team in the Soviet Union, applying the program's lessons to new industrial towns. Related ideas spread from Prague and Brussels to American manufacturers' test kitchens.

How are the survivors rescued?

Parts from approximately 50 kitchens fill a 2,150-square-foot warehouse in Frankfurt-Fechenheim, saved by the Ernst-May-Gesellschaft and its predecessor, the Gesellschaft für Kunst und Denkmalpflege. Shelves hold opal-glass mushroom lampshades and tubs of hardware; pallets of crumbling Solnhofen limestone floor tiles line the walls.

"It's an amazing place," says conservator Kerstin Frost, who restores pieces including the deep-blue kitchen LACMA acquired. Because the kitchens sit in public buildings, the housing administration would neither sell them nor let residents keep them. Volunteer Peter Schepp recalls the administration's response when he intervened: "We throw it away. Do you want it?" He arranged notification whenever a kitchen faced removal.

A photographer documents each interior with a fisheye lens before disassembly. When tenants' renovations have left little intact, "we rescue just the few original remaining parts, like the screws that fix the furnishings to the wall," Schepp says. Restoration begins with "cleaning, cleaning, cleaning," Frost says. Drawer runners wear down nearly two centimeters; knife strikes halve the thickness of drawer backs. Particleboard signals a later renovation.

What changes with landmark protection?

Over the past two years, several Neues Frankfurt estates have been placed under Denkmalschutz, and the city has hired Frost to restore kitchens for new tenants. Working with architect Kristian Kaffenberger, she preserves 1920s cabinetry while adding space for refrigerators and dishwashers and raising counters from 31 to 35 inches.

The program has slowed salvage calls from as many as 10 a year to two or three. "It cuts our source," Schepp says. "But we don't mind. We consider it a success."

Frost compares a kitchen conserved in place to a musical instrument still played rather than displayed. "Both are necessary," she says. "Museums have been very, very important in ensuring their survival."