Nurseries through the Decades

Time-travel back to the design trends of the 20th century

By Marisa Bardach

Today, an interior decorator might urge you to buy an $875 crib. (After all, J-Lo bought it for her twins.) News flash: It hasn't always been this way. Before babyhood became a booming industry, nursery design simply followed the trends of the time. Would your baby's room have been a psychedelic trip in the '70s? We dusted off the department store catalogs to find out!

Image courtesy of Sears

1910s: Furniture Fun

Open a Babies"R"Us catalog and you'll find glossy pages of colorful design ideas. In the early 1900s, the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog featured black-and-white illustrations of basic baby needs.

Some unusual items were featured, too, like this 1917 high chair that converts into—yes, it's true—a go-cart. Spreading the chair's legs into a squat stance allowed Baby to zoom around on hardwood floors.

The idea alone may make you want to scream, "Product recall!," but Kathy Douglas, VP and general merchandise manager of Kmart's children's collection under Sears Holdings, says this Sears item was a forerunner of the transitional furniture trend of the 1990s.

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