On October 18, 1921, Charles Strite, a Stillwater mechanic, received a patent for the first pop-up toaster. By the 1940s, the device had become a must-have in every household and the greatest thing invented since slice bread. (The first machine-sliced bread wasn’t sold until 1928.)
After World War II, U.S. manufacturers shifted from producing tanks and machine guns back to automobiles and appliances. The new suburbanites were the ultimate consumers. They were receptive to new technologies, and they believed in a limitless future. They watched a lot of television and read many magazines. They were ideal targets for advertisers, whose messages were often woven seamlessly into popular TV programs.
When Americans were polled in 1944 about their purchases, their collective wish list featured electric-powered conveniences – the items General Electric touted in its Live Better Electronically ad campaign.
Washing machines came first, followed by electric irons, refrigerators, stoves, toasters, radios, vacuum cleaners, electric fans and water heaters.
In 1959, at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev debated capitalism versus communism in a model kitchen set up for the fair.
Nixon insisted that American superiority in the Cold War was rooted not in weapons, but in the safe, abundant family life of suburban homes. Gesturing to the replica kitchen, he said, “In America, we like to make life easier for women.”
The American housewife had become a symbol of her country’s prosperity and consumerism.
The Mrs. Minnesota 1958 contest was held in the Cavalcade of Gas Kitchens area at the Northwest Builders Show in Minneapolis. Betty Bach (Mrs. Alvin J. Bach) of Columbia Heights, took home the crown.
A May pictorial in the St. Paul Pioneer Press showed the “career housewife and mother” inside her “attractive, spic-and-span modern house.” Betty went on to earn third place at the Mrs. America contest.
The past collided with the future in postwar kitchens, where space-age toasters, inspired by the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, nestled with cross-stitched tea towels and Bakelite-handled cake servers.
While the new trend in home decorating favored sleek, streamlined designs, few folks could afford to throw everything out and start over.
Frugal housewives clipped coupons and saved their pennies, just as their mothers had done during the Great Depression.
Since the postwar years, American families have grown smaller, more women have entered the workforce and the suburbs have seen an increase in ethnic and racial diversity.
So what’s in store for the future?
While the hopes and dreams of the postwar era shaped today’s suburban landscape, nothing stands still.
Boomers are retiring, Gen Xers are growing into middle age and millennials are starting families.
The question remains: Is a single-family home in the suburbs still part of the American dream?
Jessica Kohen was media relations manager for the Minnesota Historical Society. This article first appeared in the October 2015 issue of Minnesota Good Age.