House of the Future, October 1958
Today I am happy to share this "postcard worthy" photo of Monsanto's House of Future. It originally opened on June 12, 1957, so by now it was just over one year old, and it looks great! You can see two women making their way through the house, and exploring the wonders within.
Wikipedia describes the HOF as "a plastic house with four wings cantilevered from a central plinth. This too had its precursors at World's Fairs, though in those cases they were simply homes with modern conveniences and aimed at housewives. Aside from displaying 'modern' conveniences such as picture phones and television remote controls, this house introduced many people to their first microwave oven."
While Monsanto intended the house to be a prediction of what life would be like in 1987, some of its future wonders have still not become part of our everyday lives...such as ultrasonic dishwashers and atomic food preservation (I know irradiated food exists, but it is not common...). I guess that a house that looks like this would be described as "dated" by today's standards, but it is dated in the same way a classic car is. It has character and style that you certainly don't see in todays tract homes and adobe-colored apartment buildings.
5 comments:
Don't forget that the house was designed by professors from MIT for Monsanto. And that the Russians duplicated it.
The Russians duplicated the House of the Future? I've never heard that story before...do you know any more details?
Those "Russkies" sure had a knack for "borrowing" other people's research!
Sometime this year MIT is opening their museum and will have a major exhibit on the HOF. Should be way cool!! Hey Major I think Matterhorn is pulling our collective legs with that Russkie stuff!! DD
D'OH!!
No, the Russians really did. Somewhere in my collection I have an article about it. The article I have is a copy from the Monsanto corporate archive (I wrote to them in college to see if they had anything they would send me, and they sent me some nice copies.)
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