Check It Out - Combination Youngstown/Tappan

[pulltostart]

Was reading through an October 1958 issue of House&Home magazine and found this advertisement for a 54" wide combination cooking/clean-up unit.  Has anyone ever seen or owned one of these?  Certainly an odd-bird-unit.  Were Youngstown and Tappan connected in other ways?  Or was this just an attempt to try something new and different and generate home sales?

 

Please pardon the quality of the pictures, they were taken with my cell phone.  If you can't make out small text let me know and I'll supplement this post.

 

lawrence

 

[jamiel]

My parents bought a house in 1978 built in 1960 with that dishwasher (yes, it was 30 inches wide) and a Youngstown-Tappan electric cooktop that was about 33 inches wide...not identical to that cooktop because the controls were in a line at the rear. They were rotary knobs with 7 fixed heats (old house had a pushbutton GE so thought we were "movin on up" with 2 more speeds. The built-in oven had been replaced 5 or so years before with a Hotpoint self-cleaning oven.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Tappan built in ovens had the smallest oven capacity on the market. That said, I loved the look of the 40" electric and gas ranges with that beautiful shadow box control panel. Something happened to Tappan in the 60s and they became cheap junk which, I guess, is one reason they made ranges for Monkey Ward. Maybe it was joining with American Kitchens which was part of good old Design and Manufacturing.

 

[turquoisedude]

Wow, I thought only Modern Maid ever had the range top right smack on top of a dishwasher!  An interesting concept, but those 30 inch Youngstown dishwashers were not the best apparently.... 

 

[jamiel]

They were miserable dishwashers...you could line up two rows of plates in the bottom row, but little room for glasses or bowls in the upper rack. It lasted about 30 days before we replaced it with a KA in 1979.

 

[circlew]

By 1958 Youngstown Kitchens was owned by American-Standard, as Mullins Mfg. Co. had merged with them in '56. I'm not sure how Tappan was involved - whether AS had any ownership in Tappan, or if it was just a marketing agreement.