Coming Soon: Tours Of A Neighborhood’s Kitchens

Our most basic definition of a kitchen is that it is a room equipped for cooking. In past eras this may have been an apt description of the place where family meals were prepared, but the modern kitchen is far more than a small room hidden behind closed doors in a far corner of the house.

Today, more often than not the kitchen functions as the center of our lives, the heart of our homes where everyone wants to spend their time, including our guests.

How these spaces are designed and decorated varies widely just as the people who create them also vary. On Sunday, March 30, from noon to 4 pm, eight Newtown residents will open their kitchens to the public for a Newtown Neighborhood Kitchen Tour.

Emphasis will be on the considerable differences in creativity and style among the kitchens on the tour. From the beautifully decorated and highly technical, state-of-the-art to the rustic and funky, the featured kitchens will expose tour goers to the kind of variety found in just about any Newtown neighborhood.

Michael Stirk and David Goodrich have included their kitchen on the tour. Two of Michael’s passions are Spanish culture and cooking.  Her kitchen’s warm terra-cotta colored walls offer creative inspiration, and a large Mexican table with massive, turned legs is ideal when it comes to serving her culinary creations.

Suzanne Bush’s kitchen is also on the tour. In 1988 she and her husband, Bruce Malkin, converted an antique barn into their home.

The nontraditional kitchen they included is efficiently small, and is designed to offer them expansive outdoor views across an adjacent field, which is still hayed each season.

 Three large windows with eastern exposure run the width of the kitchen so sunglasses are often required with the morning coffee.

Bernadette and Wayne Addessi built their home nine years ago. They both cook and they often have family get-togethers during which everyone cooks, so they built extensive counter space in their kitchen.

The Addessis also installed two kitchen sinks, with one situated in a center island near the cook top. They say they couldn’t do without it since it is ideally located for performing many tasks from draining pasta to cleaning vegetables.

Details on the five additional kitchens will follow in next week’s Enjoy section.

The Newtown Neighborhood Kitchen Tour is being sponsored by Newtown Residential Preservation Society, a neighborhood organization dedicated to preserving Newtown’s quality of life.

Tickets are $10 per person and are available by telephoning 270-9344 or 426-0597.

Each ticket will include a list of the kitchens on the tour complete with addresses and a map. Visitors may travel at their own pace from kitchen to kitchen in any order they wish.