vitrine · the corridors

The corridors — cross-decade arcs

Where the charts live. Every point is a sourced fact and deep-links to its room placard; a decade whose record is silent renders as the gap it is.

Featured epoch comparisons

1900s ↔ 1950s 1950s ↔ 2020s 1900s ↔ 2020s

A median home — in hours of work

Price ÷ the room's wage anchor, computed at build. Tier letters carry the weakest input.

Budget composition

Share of household expenditure, fixed category palette, direct labels. Decades without a parseable breakdown are not drawn.

⚠ Survey populations differ across the century — 1901 wage-earner families vs modern consumer units; each bar links to its placard, which names who was measured.

Life expectancy at birth

years (all races, both sexes)

⚠ Decades before the 1960s published white-only male/female life tables with no all-races total — the placard carries the sexed figures and the chart renders the gap rather than a spliced concept.

Infant mortality

deaths under age 1 per 1,000 live births

People in poverty

% below the official poverty line

⚠ The official poverty series begins in 1959 — earlier decades have no line.

Homeownership

% of occupied housing units owner-occupied

Complete plumbing

% of homes with complete plumbing

Television

% of households

Telephone

% of households

⚠ 1910s–1930s sources counted telephones per 1,000 population, not households — those decades render as gaps rather than a unit splice.

⚠ The 2020s point counts cell phones (92.7%); the landline share is on the placard.

Air conditioning

% of households with AC

⚠ The 1980s source bridges 1978 central-AC and 1993 total-AC figures — no single-decade datum, so the decade renders as a gap.

Cable television

% of TV households

⚠ The 2010s source reports subscriber counts amid cord-cutting, not a share.

Home computer

% of households

Internet at home

% of households

⚠ 1990s–2010s sources report within-decade ranges; the placards carry them and the chart renders the gaps.

Radio

% of households

Vehicle at home

% of households with a vehicle

⚠ Decennial vehicle data for 1960–2000 is pending curation (WI-8).

Women's unpaid home production

hours per week, prime-age women

⚠ The 2020s source (ATUS) measures all-adult household activities, a concept splice from Ramey's women's series — flagged, not smoothed, so the chart renders it as a gap and the placard carries both figures.

Men's unpaid home production

hours per week, prime-age men

Food's share of spending

% of household expenditure

⚠ Populations differ across the century — 1901 wage-earner families vs modern consumer units; every placard names who was measured.

⚠ The 1950s point is the nearest available survey (CEX 1960–61), stated plainly rather than back-cast.

Weekly hours, manufacturing

hours per week, production workers

Consumer Price Index

CPI-U level, 1982–84 = 100

The pairwise set

Every decade against every other — each page shows only the fact families the measure guard certifies comparable for that pair.

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90s	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	↔	↔	↔
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20s	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·

Confidence & flags

A — official statistical series

B — official microdata, computed by this project

C — reconstructed from period surveys

D — scholarly estimate

Gap — no reliable record; shown as the gap it is

Reading the museum

Every fact is behind glass: its placard names the source, the year, who was measured, and how sure we are. Chart points and stage glyphs deep-link to their placards.

Falling metrics render in copper, rising in brass. Absent technology isn't drawn — a bare house says more than ghosts.

	00s	10s	20s	30s	40s	50s	60s	70s	80s	90s	00s	10s	20s
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80s	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	↔	↔	↔	↔
90s	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	↔	↔	↔
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20s	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·

	00s	10s	20s	30s	40s	50s	60s	70s	80s	90s	00s	10s	20s
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90s	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	·	↔	↔	↔
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