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The Master Bedroom
This portion of the website was designed and researched by Kristie.   Information, primary resources and photographs courtesy of the Johnson County Museum of History.

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bedroomoriginalThis master bedroom would be quite a luxury for many people even today, considering all the components that they had installed in this part of the house. I personally think that a few of the gizmos and gadgets are more modern than what we have now.

For instance, I’ll start with the vanity. This vanity is built into the walls of the house, which would make it hard to arrange furniture, but these people did a pretty nice job of it. It has three mirrored walls, two of which open into cabinets for makeup storage. Under the mirrors and the table part of it, there are two more magnetic cabinets. It even has an outlet for hair dryers and curling irons. It also has a beautiful wooden stool with embroidered flowers. But what I think is the neatest thing about this vanity is the light. It has a light for applying makeup for daywear, and then you flip a switch and you’ve got… a light for applying night makeup! Pretty nifty, huh?VanityDay

Another interesting tidbit is the door arrangement. There are now two open doors into the room (one leading from the den and one leading to the living room), and one that is closed off. There was originally only one door in the room but when they started tours through the house, they closed it off and built two new ones for easier access.

During the 50’s it was considered stylish for the husband and wife to sleep in the different beds like couples on TV, so this room has the typical 50’s pink twin beds. The beds and headboard are not the same, but they are the same brand of furniture, one that was very popular in the 50’s. BedArea

Over the bed is a long window with thick curtains. These curtains are convenient because they give you privacy while still giving you light. It also has a large square window that is covered up most of the time.

The closet has just a couple of things different with it, but you can find those things nowadays. The door is sliding and mirrored with metal rods for hanging clothes. There are shelves that run across the top and middle of the inside and it has a slanted shoe rack. There are fluorescent bulbs that run across the sides, and it’s big enough that you could walk into it if you wanted to.

And the last but most certainly not the least thing about this room is in my opinion the neatest. Between the twin beds there is a dial and a switch. Each of the main electric plugs in the house is numbered, and the dial has each of these numbers beside it. If you turn the dial to a number, and then flip the switch to on or off, it will turn this appliance on or off, no matter where in the house it is. Isn’t that a convenient invention?arrowblue.gif (94 bytes)

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Last update 04/05/06 03:13 PM
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Johnson County Museum of History
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Nieman Enhanced Learning Center

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