"Wow, this place is smaller than many walk in closets."- Ryan Westervelt

Ryan was talking about the kitchen in the Greenbelt Museum but his statement is a slightly exaggerated version of my reaction to the size of the Greenbelt Museum master bedroom. I also agree with his assessment that the room was small but efficient. In fact, the museum master bedroom has many implements that serve essentially the same purpose as implements found in bedrooms today (If you haven't already done so, please see my comparison of the Greenbelt Museum master bedroom to my own bedroom). Besides serving as the place to sleep, the room also served as the place where the ironing and sewing were done.

So why do I feel so cramped in the Greenbelt Museum Master bedroom (and in my own bedroom for that matter) whereas the original Greenbelt residents felt so privileged to be in such clean and spacious quarters? Sara Brownlow observed the same phenomenon in her comparison of the Greenbelt community to her own community. Part of the answer to my question is found in her discovery that the original Greenbelt residents were screened such that they were almost all coming from living environments which were much worse in terms of space, design and cleanliness than Greenbelt. In addition, part of the screening process was to determine how well a family would fit into the mold of a "Greenbelt family" (Williamson,72). As a result, neither Sara nor I, in any of our research, was able to find a negative depiction of Greenbelt from its original residents.

As noted in my comparison, there are many similarities in the museum bedroom and my own bedroom. This stands out in stark contrast to Jared Stahl's comparison of his parents' Cheltenham master bedroom to the museum bedroom. He suggests that the socio-economic differences are the main reason for this difference in size and content of the rooms. Brian Meyer's comparison of the Greenbelt living space to his Knox box apartment only bosters this point. I am forced to agree because I realize that my situation (although temporary) places me in the lower economic bracket and hence the similarities in our living spaces.

The other part of the answer to my question stems from my own background. I come from a family of eight. I have four sisters and a brother and we always lived, together with our parents, under the same roof. Due to my father's job, we were always provided housing which contained a minimum of four bedrooms (but typically 5 or 6 bedrooms), had separate living room and dining room areas suitable for entertaining and had a large kitchen. The typical master bedroom that I was used to (prior to growing up and being forced into relative poverty) is at least twice the size of the Greenbelt Museum master bedroom and has its own bathroom. So naturally from my perspective, both my current bedroom and the museum master bedroom are somewhat restrictive in size.

Now that we've identified some documented differences in backgrounds and perspective, what else do the contents of our bedrooms tell us about our two societies? Lets analyze some of the contents of the museum master bedroom:

  1. Radio - News and entertainment were important to the adults in these families. Children's programming had not permeated the airwaves at the time, therefore the logical place for the radio (if the family had only one) was in the parent's bedroom. If an additional radio was acquired, it would most likely be placed in the living room area for entertaining guests.
  2. Sewing Machine - Besides suggesting additional domestic talents that the original Greenbelt woman may have had, it suggests the need to be frugal. The sewing machine in that era was very common in working class and lower middle class families as a means of saving money by sewing and mending your own clothes and thereby relying less on department stores and tailors.
  3. Ironing Board - The ironing board was placed in the master bedroom primarily because it was the only "work" area large enough to handle it. The kitchen and children's room were certainly too small or too congested to house the ironing board and it would not have been proper to do chores in the living or dining rooms.

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