Frances Gabe Invented a Self-Cleaning House
Inventor, builder, and artist Frances Gabe (1915 – 2016) channeled her impatience with housework into the design of a self-cleaning house. She started designing it in 1940, ended twelve years of building it herself in the 1980s, and received a patent for it in 1984. Gabe was the daughter of an architect and builder and was married to a builder for 35 years. She had a home-renovation business at one time, although she was also a talented ceramicist and jewelry-maker. Gabe’s goal with her self-cleaning house was to free up time for women to spend with their families and to allow elderly people and people with disabilities more autonomy, she told People magazine in 1982.
Gabe’s 1,000 square foot self-cleaning home has been described as a carwash or a giant dishwasher. Each room in the Newburg, Oregon house was designed with a sprinkler on the ceiling that sprayed water, with soap added to the plumbing system when needed. Surfaces were dried with jets of warm air. The wood floors were coated with multiple layers of marine varnish to protect them. The floors sloped a half inch per 10 feet to gutters at the room perimeters; water drained out through the fireplace and into the dog house, giving it (or its occupant) a wash as well. All items in the house were protected from water. For example, picture frames and book covers were water-tight, and furniture sat on castors and was upholstered with waterproof materials. The bedding and a rug were the only items that needed to be removed or protected before starting the house’s cleaning cycle.
Gabe built the walls of the house with concrete masonry units. Some are turned on their side to let light in through the open cells in the cinder block. Gabe enclosed knickknacks in some of these openings and protected them from dust and the elements—both interior and exterior—with plexiglass coverings.
Gabe’s dishwashing cabinet.
Gabe’s patent contained 68 individual parts covering the home’s other labor-saving cleaning devices. These include self-cleaning bathroom fixtures, a cabinet dishwashing system that eliminated the need to load and unload a dishwasher, and a laundry system that cleaned and dried clothing on its hangers.
While Gabe’s inventions received several bursts of popular attention during her lifetime, she was never able to monetize it. To her great disappointment, her prototype self-cleaning home was never replicated. Owing to financial limitations, Gabe’s patent expired in 2001. In 2008, her family had to move Gabe into a nursing home. By then, the house had suffered earthquake damage and a number of the cleaning systems no longer operated as designed. Gabe died in 2016 at age 101.
You can watch a 1990 interview with Gabe and a demonstration of some of the house’s features here. This 2017 article has a number of photos of Gabe and her home. Read about Alice Austin, a kindred spirit and city planner who designed a community to reduce domestic drudgery in 1914.
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Sources
Kristin McMurran, “Frances Gabe's Self-Cleaning House Could Mean New Rights of Spring for Housewives,” People, March 29, 1982.
Rhonda Barton, “On a prototype of self-cleaning house: Introducing the self-cleaning house,” The Boston Globe, Jan 11, 1985: 1.
Chuck Palahniuk, Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon (Crown Journeys: 2003).
Margalit Fox, “Frances Gabe, Creator of the Only Self-Cleaning Home, Dies at 101,” New York Times, July 18, 2017.
Patricia Leigh Brown, “Son of Carwash, the Self-Cleaning House,” New York Times, January 17, 2002: F13.