Dollhouse

The A. Schoenhut Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, manufactured toy dollhouses from 1917 to 1934, when the effects of the Great Depression forced it to discontinue production. One of the more detailed two-story houses they produced, this wood-and-fiberboard house features five rooms and an attic, a front porch with turned pillars, and lace curtains adorning the front windows.

Inexpensive, mass-produced dollhouses first appeared in the United States at the end of the 19th century as an alternative to the handmade dollhouses that were too costly for most Americans. In 1895, however, the R. Bliss Company of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, adopted European manufacturing techniques to churn out small, simple wood houses decorated with lithographed paper. In 1917 the Schoenhut Company followed suit with its own line of "very artistic, high-class doll houses and bungalows."

Schoenhut's designs successfully combined inexpensive production techniques with contemporary architectural trends to produce a line of best-selling dollhouses into the early 1930s. The dollhouses were constructed of wood, with embossed fiberboard "stone walls" and tin roofs. Interiors featured lithographed wallpaper and even such trompe l'oeil architectural details as fireplaces and interior rooms.