This type of home is best exemplified by the average real estate dealer’s offering in a city or suburban development. House is usually pretty new, though it may need some repairs. Designed for efficient modern life, although rooms are likely to be small and boxlike compared with older houses. Many electrical gadgets to reduce the drudgery of household chores. Often comparatively new materials will have been used. Ceilings likely to be low, and little space between your house and your neighbors’. You may be able to mutually “enjoy” each other’s Hi-Fi and TV sets. It is a fairly standard American home–clean, convenient–but not inspiring in spirit. ~ Mary Jean Alexander, Decorating Begins with You, 1958.
NPS Home design No. M-38; Image courtesy of SportSuburban on Flickr.com
MA-3596 House Plan; Image courtesy of SportSuburban on Flickr.com
Boys' Room "Better Homes & Gardens" October 1960; Image courtesy of SaltyCotton on Flickr.com
"New Kitchen Cabinets" 3, "Better Homes & Gardens" January 1951; Image courtesy of SaltyCotton on Flickr.com
I grew up in a contemporary conventional suburban ranch-style house (I couldn’t find any exterior photos of our house–even online! My mother must have them all). The housing development was built in the mid-1950s and my family moved into our house in 1962. Back then, our neighborhood was considered the boonies and was still surrounded by citrus groves and ranches. By the time my mother sold the house almost 40 years later because my dad had died, Los Angeles development had not only overtaken our neighborhood but it had progressed another 20 miles northward.
Are you a “contemporary conventional” person?
The neighborhood into which we moved when I was two was occupied almost entirely by veterans of WWII and their families who had secured financing thanks to the “GI Bill”. In 1957, the house on its quarter acre cost $16,000. It had 3 small bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen with a contiguous eating area, a living room, and a full basement. My dad did amazing things for us in that basement! He secured desks and a slate chalkboard from a school being demolished downtown and set them up in one quarter of the basement and we played school; he was also given a slate pool table from a social club downtown when it was demolished. It had solid oak carved legs, braided leather pockets and an unblemished cover. I must have learned to play pool when I was 7 or 8! We had the two halves of a ping pong table to put on top of it (put the GI blanket on it first!!!) and that wasn’t just for ping pong. One Christmas we got an electric car racing track set and we put it up on the ping pong table/pool table. When we had the whole family over, the ping pong table got a makeover and that was where we had the big dinner. He set up a little kitchen area where my mother would cook when it was too hot in the summer (pre AC, you know). We had a record player and a Webcor reel to reel tape recorder we were allowed to play with as much as we wanted! We interviewed each other and sang songs. He attached the swings from our outdoor playset to the ceiling beams during the winter so we could swing (which makes me shudder to think of cracking a head on that floor…but it didn’t happen and we never thought of it at the time). We roller skated down there. When my older sister started ballet classes, he found a metal barre and attached it to the wall. We all had tap shoes and ballet shoes and we danced down there.