Photograph by W.C. Persons, courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
Hunger is the best cook. That’s the translation of the text stenciled above the window. At first glance, that matter-of-fact sentiment seems to inform the entirety of this tidy, functional kitchen, managed by Emma, wife of stained-glass artist Emil Frei Sr. In the 1920s, the Freis lived at 3934 S. Grand in Carondelet, in a home adjoining Emil’s studio. He was just beginning to work on the dazzling mosaics inside the New Cathedral and was considered the world’s foremost producer of Munich pictorial stained glass. On closer inspection, it’s clear that Emma cared as much about beauty and symmetry as he did. Take a look at those ceramic windmill canisters, for instance. Read the labels, and you realize she arranged them because she liked the way they looked—three of them are labeled “Sugar.” That would mean nursing an unreal sweet tooth, especially because there is yet another canister of sugar on the shelf near the stove, which is, by the way, a Quick Meal—precursor to the Magic Chef, invention of another German immigrant, John Ringen. Though charming and neat, Emma’s kitchen, even with its brand-new stove, was hopelessly outdated from a design standpoint. In 1926, Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky unveiled her “Frankfurt kitchen” in Europe. Modeled after railway dining cars, it featured a sink built into the wall, countertops, and fitted cabinetry that made decorative dry goods canisters obsolete. In other words, it was the arrival of what we know as the modern kitchen.
