In the US, the dining room was cracked open by the lowly TV tray. Fleeing dining formality to watch the Ed Sullivan Show, a line of sight to the tube became the family geometry long before feminism freed mom from being a server.

Stocking a dining room with a TV just isn't done, so while the good silver sits unpolished in the hutch alongside the fancy dishes, the clock ticks on abandoning the whole enterprise to be replaced with, do you see it coming?, the home theatre/game room.

Contrary femme (and avid cook) that I am, one of my big "must haves" in buying a house is that the kitchen was at least somewhat separated from the rest of the house. I don't want to walk in the front door and the first thing I see is the kitchen sink.

(And then there's the absurdity of people spending fortunes on trophy kitchens, complete with Viking stoves they never use. Ah, the absurdity of humans!)

Forty-five years ago, in small-town Western Kansas, my maternal grandmother's "modern" (and all electric) kitchen allowed the woman at the sink to look over the heads of her grandchildren without so much as turning around, let alone opening a door. There was a great long booth in front of a big picture window looking out on the neighbor across the street that stood alone in a great green (or golden) wheat field. The kitchen counter was behind that booth, with a little shelf between the kitchen counter right at a twelve-year-old head level. Salt and pepper shakers lived there (as handy for the cook as for the diners). Grandmother passed french toast and gossip across the back of that booth for about fifty yearsl The adjoining, and separate, dining room was for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and winter-time birthdays. All other meals were in this great kitchen, or outside at the patio table, by the grill.

And grandmother's mother's house in Northeast Kansas had a great square kitchen with a table big enough for all twelve children and three farm hands. Women managed kitchens like these the way shop-floor supervisors manage a production line. They are engaged with the business of cooking and the business of eating, start to finish.

Grant, the great open kitchen is hardly anything new, at least not to farm families. Perhaps it is those little dining rooms that are the odd innovation.

Its a great topic, but I think we are talking about the end of some sort of upper-class, London town-house dining room that may have only existed in our Masterpiece Theater dreams.

I'm hungry, now; partly for some house-plan data, and partly for some french toast.

Apologies again Grant, firstly I didn't mean all your points, just those I highlighted, plus rereading my post I seem to come across somewhat brusque; not my intention, perhaps a facet of first-thing-in-the-morning-syndrome.

I'm always a little wary when sterotyped preconceptions like the hold of Victorian propriety' get applied to my homeland. Clearly in your case these aren't preconceived, but perhaps you indulge yourself in lending them rather too much weight.
There's great concern here at the lack of any propriety, which is why we end up with tory MPs and the daily mail constantly trotting out simplistic soundbites about family, and victorian values, and even, god forbid, class. But such is life.

Sweeping statements also raise my defenses somewhat, like "shift we see in the world of photograph where the portrait has given way to the more spontaneous action shot."
As a semi-pro I can testify to the portrait being a timeless format that will never go, and the spontaneous action shot has been a healthy facet of the art for quite some time too; see Henri C-B, Capa et al.

Aaaanyhoo, I stumbled upon your blog not too long of time ago and am finding it fascinating reading, so by way of reinforcing the Hugh Grant school of British stereotype, once again, sorry … sorry