In the late 1930s a federal law required that all college students of home economics spend nine weeks of their senior year living in a "home management house." These were laboratory houses where women learned the skills of managing a house so that they might teach others how to do so. A quaint idea in the day of Youtube and Google.
With the professionalization of home economics as a field of study, such standards had to be created in order to improve perceptions of the field. The field of education has long required practice as part of the learning process in the form of internships and student teaching. Home economics wanted to have the same status as other schools of learning. Modern theories of home management could not be learned in one's own home, but had to be the subject of rigorous study and practice in a modern home.
When the home management house at Eastern Illinois University placed an orphaned baby in the house, as part of the experience, the state moved to have the child removed, stating that the coeds would "spoil" the baby and that a strictly female influence would harm the baby's personality. Unfortunately for mothers of the same era, laws did not mandate a strict division of labor between mothers and fathers, so that the babies would not be marred by the lack of male influence in their lives. I wonder how many men were caring for children in orphanages -- in anything other than an administrative role? A baby was used at the Rambo house, but this baby was the son of one of the professors, so did not spend all its time at Rambo House.
ISU had its own home management house beginning in 1939. It was built as a WPA project with both state and federal funds and was called the Jessie A. Rambo House. Decisions about the decorations of the home were made by two of the professors of the department. The ISU house was unique for its duplex design -- one side with modern electrical appliances and the other with less modern gas appliances. Alumni recalled that the teachers would inspect the home for dust with white gloves and that the students cleaned even when there was no dust, just to have practice cleaning. The home was shared with the home economics department of Illinois Wesleyan in 1960, one of the examples of cooperation between the two schools. In 1972 the home was no longer in use and became the Alumni Services building. It was finally demolished in 2015, a derelict building not worth saving.
Photo credit: Pantagraph Negatives Collection, used with permission of McLean County Museum of History