This Freezer Placement From The '50s Saved So Much Space — It Needs A Comeback

In the mid-1940s, post-war America had a housing problem. Soldiers returned home from service, started families, and soon there was a baby boom and housing shortage. Builders were throwing up small homes as quickly as they could to meet demand. And while these homes were perfectly functional, the kitchens left something to be desired. They were tiny; and we mean genuinely tiny. These spaces, comparable to a walk-in closet today, housed a stove, sink, refrigerator, and a little bit of counterspace. And somehow you were supposed to cook there.

By the 1950s, appliance companies had recognized the problem and began to come up with ingenious ways to save space. Revco, a Michigan-based brand that's now become sort of a holy grail for mid-century appliance collectors, came up with something pretty creative: a freezer-dinette combo. Essentially, it was a chest freezer built into the base of a kitchen table. You could still sit down for dinner and pull-up your chair — leg room wasn't impeded — but, it appears, instead of table legs, the supportive base was frozen food storage.

The best part was it didn't take up extra floor space; instead, it occupied the dead space under the table. Other brands, like Acme and Frigidaire, were similarly coming up with space-saving ideas to maximize every inch of your kitchen, but nothing quite like the under-table freezer. Unfortunately, whether due to cost, aesthetics, or the sometimes-noisy freezer technology of the time, the Revco freezer-dinette combo never really took off.

A lot has happened since the early days of freezers. When Clarence Birdseye figured out flash-freezing in the 1920s, iceboxes slowly began to die off throughout the next two decades and were replaced by chest freezers. But when TV dinners became popular in the 1950s, everyone suddenly wanted more frozen food storage at home, right in their kitchens. That's what gave the appliance industry the push toward the refrigerator and freezer unit forms we know today. And it's also what was driving Revco to ask whether you really needed to sacrifice more floor and wall space for it.

There's something about Revco's approach, which hid the entire freezer inside furniture you already needed. It's the same logic as bedframes with storage drawers below — use what's already there. It begs the question, is there anything as ingenious today? Well, kind of. 

Summit makes under-counter freezers that fit below a standard countertop, but if you're dreaming of reaching down at a mid-dinner party to grab a chilled bottle of wine from your under-table freezer setup, you'll just have to keep waiting. Still, the Revco idea was good. Maybe somebody should bring it back.