1949 B74-49 Westinghouse Range - $275 (Ontario)

[ovrphil]

http://inlandempire.craigslist.org/atq/5350891761.html

 

[rp2813]

Wow!  That must have been their TOL model for '49.  My mom's was a lowly E64-49 and didn't look anywhere near as modern.

 

[ken]

Ralph

Same word came to mind when I saw it even before reading your comment. Looks very modern for being a 49.

 

[rp2813]

Well, considering the connection instructions are taped to the back, I think there's something fishy about this.  That range looks later than '49 except for the knobs. 

 

[tomturbomatic]

No, 49 and 50, possibly 51 were similar. This was the 1949 single oven Commander. The double oven was A77449.

 

[rp2813]

So Tom, are you saying that the subject stove and this one were produced during the same model year?

 

[norgeway]

The portable

Econo Cooker was sold with the double oven version of this so you would have a deep well...

 

[tomturbomatic]

Ralph, your mother's range was built on the older platform with the surface units on the opposite side of the range than the TOL 49 range and the main oven is on the opposite side. The oven doors on the one in your picture are the older recessed ones so they must have been using up old body parts like WH did in 58 when they had two TOL 40" ranges, the swoopy one from 1957 with the 4 surface units clustered on the left and the enormous bulging controls on the right and the square line new one with the angular control panel above the split cooktop. This switch by WH was discussed somewhere here a while back and then, after the new wide oven 40" ranges were introduced in 1958, WH went to the split cooktops.

 

[rp2813]

Tom, thanks for the pertinent reply.  My mom had stated that Westinghouse was using up old stock after WWII, but the B74-49 is the first range I've seen from '49 with an updated '50s look.

 

Coincidentally, before my mom had met my dad, she bought herself a new car.  It was a '48 Ford club coupe.  All of her friends told her to wait until the '49 models came out in a whole new style, but she didn't.  She ended up leaving the '48 behind when she married my dad, but apparently repeated the same type of thing when they bought appliances for their new kitchen.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Ralph, there was such a pent up demand for everything after the war that manufacturers could not waste time designing new stuff and just returned to the old stamps and dies to churn out "new" models based on pre-war designs. Bendix advertised their Automatic Home Laundry as a "proven design" so why chance it by buying some new fangled automatic. The Bendix had been kept in limited production during the war, mostly for military purchasing. Many appliance manufacturers were allowed to make a small number of appliances during the war as a way to equip base housing and for other needs.