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family needs ~ with an economy and ingenuity typical of their background.^" They
built a large ceUar beneath the dairy, enabling them to make and store traditional foods
and wines, and enlarged the living quarters of their home only minimally. They were
accustomed to cramped and close living and drew no doubt a certain amount of
comfort from continuing this life-style.
In the original home, the children's bedrooms were approached through a door
leading from the public bar into a narrow outside lane. The main bedroom, where
Andrea and Margherita slept, was behind the public dining-room and divided by a wall
from the family's lounge. Typical of the close relationship which existed between the
private and the pubUc halves of peasant families, the Lafranchis did not alter this basic
stmcture and continued to live close to the working areas of the hotel. The kitchen
and laundry were housed along the extemal laneway with a bathroom at its end. A
weU-equipped kitchen with an almost two metre fireplace and a small wall oven for
baking bread was perhaps the most vivid reminder of their homes in Ticino. Andrea
and Margherita used a minimum of labour and resources to renovate their home,
roofing the entire outside lane to make it a part of the interior. With its poorly
constmcted and uneven floors, it was not a particularly ornate home but one which
served the practical needs of the family. A fifth bedroom was added later. Once these
modifications had been completed, the Swiss Mountain Hotel remained in much the
same condition for the next century ~ presumbably because it continued to meet the
emotional, physical and economic needs of the family.
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