Traditional Kitchen Flooring in the 1930s

The Kitchen

• Homemakers living in the 1930s might grow faint at the sight of today's huge, luxurious kitchens featuring expansive islands, high-tech styling and sophisticated appliances. Back then, kitchens were tiny enclaves bustling with activity. Walls were usually painted white or cream to match sinks, iceboxes and cooking stoves. Depending upon the age of the house, turn-of-the-century tiles of marble, jasper and granite remained on some kitchen floors, but for new homes, only the latest resilient flooring would do. Linoleum, invented in 1845, remained the most popular and affordable kitchen flooring throughout the decade.

The Colors

• Walk into a 21st-century kitchen and you'll find ceramic tile, wood and industrial cement floors in soothing, neutral colors. Perhaps the struggles of the1930s made homemakers seek brighter colors and patterns, thus the unofficial theme of 1930s kitchen decorators seemed to be: "The more color, the better." It wasn't unusual to choose a "triadic" pattern for kitchen flooring that combined red, yellow and blue in intricate geometric patterns that may or may not have been surrounded by a solid color border. Meanwhile, Art Nouveau palettes of yellow, green, white and putty were popular in upscale homes.

The Companies

• You may recognize some of these names. During the 1930s, the international and domestic companies that dominated the kitchen flooring market were Azrock, Amtico, Armstrong, BF Goodrich, Congoleum, Flintkote, Kentile and Mannington Mills. Of these, Congoleum had the most exotic roots. Scotland's Nairn Company, the originator of linoleum, mined raw asphalt material in Africa's Belgian Congo, so when marketers needed a name for their brand of flooring, the family chose Congoleum-Nairn as a tribute to the international partnership.

The Floors

• Linoleum kitchen flooring was considered the epitome of fashion in the 1930s. Made of ground cork and linseed oil bonded to canvas or burlap, it looked as beautiful as the marble and ceramic tiles found in the kitchens of upper-class homes -- without the cost. Linoleum's market domination was threatened in 1933 when Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition introduced a new type of kitchen flooring: vinyl. Easy to install, low-maintenance and cheap, vinyl could be made to look like stone and wood. Made of resin, stabilizers and pigments, people loved this new flooring. But with the approach of the war, it became nearly impossible to get the materials needed to make it, so consumers would have to wait until the war's end to enjoy their vinyl kitchen floors.