Lets talk quality ranges!

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Western-Holly

Greg, is that range electric or gas? The pic isn't clear enough for me to tell. If electric, I didn't know they ever made any. It looks a great deal like the electric range we used for a short time after moving into the house I now own. It belonged to the people who moved into our old house, which only had space for a 30". My Mom and Gale traded until the cabinets and countertop were modified to accept their wider model. I always remember it having a round oven window, and wondered what kind it was. We only had it for a couple months before getting our Westinghouse back.
 
CROWN STOVE

I might have part of the story on the transition of Crown Stove.
My Grandmother's 1954 Crown stove is still in the family and I was curious as to what happened to the company.
I don't guarantee that this info is absolutely accurate because data on that company is so hard to come by.
However it appears that during their heyday they were based in Cicero,Illinois. They made ranges for many years until sometime in the 1970s (?) the roof collapsed on the factory. They didn't have the ability to recover. I heard that some company bought the machining but who that was I do not know. Oh well, that's all I've got. Crown stoves are still in a lot of homes in Chicagoland attesting to their good quality it seems.
 
Hotpoint slide-out Teflon panels

Silly Hotpoint slide-out panel story.
As everyone knows, my Dad was an engineer for Hotpoint. He was with Home Laundry but Range was nearby.
At any rate, when the Hotpoint slide-out Teflon panels came out the employees ended up with samples. They make great cookie-sheets as they are "L" shaped and flat.
Also for Thanksgiving we made coffee for years on a huge Hotpoint drop-in drip coffeemaker. It's the one that you would drop in the Hotpoint well-cooker. We sat it on top of our Grandmother's Crown range (now in the basement after 1963) and made gobs of coffee. (Our main stove was a Universal Cribben/Sexton gas as our 1920's house had very poor electric feed.)
The coffee didn't come out in gobs but rather it made copious amounts of coffee.
And of course we ended up with lots and lots of rejected trim pieces. I am not joking when I tell you that we made grade-school election campaign buttons out of Silhouette washer and dryer knob trim centers. LOL!
 
Hotpoint Custom-Trend

Oh, and lastly..
If y'all remember a PANK HOTPOINT Custom-Trend countertop range that was for sale about a year ago in Illinois...
It had a drop-down range on the side.
Yeah - I bought it...
Love it. Haven't put it back into service yet. I may have my Crosley fridge painted pink to match. Hmmm.
The model has "RD" in it. I think its a working prototype.
Glad to have it... Thanks gang for the tip...
 
Custom-trend... more

The story on the Custom-Trend was this..
Apparently the lady who owned the house received the Custom-Trend range from the builder in 1961. The builder built the house sometime earlier and outfitted the kitchen a trendy manner including this range in 1961. Indeed when I visited the house, the kitchen was very 1960's chic.
The range was in use from at least 1961 until about a year ago.
General Electric Service fixed it once along the way, about 10 years ago. I have that receipt. Tech installed four new Calrod burners.
Limited Edition range or experiment? Who knows? The truth may be lost to history. It's interesting that the unit worked sooo long. It is clearly built to last...
 
There's lot's more!

I have over 100 pages of Frigidaire, Caloric and other salesman's pages. I don't want this thread to end! I'm going to start scanning and like Gansky, post a few at a time. And then of course, there are all the vacuum pages...! Greg
 
Woohoo! More scans - yay! I've only scratched the surface of my "library" as well, time is fleeting and it seems there is never enough to scan everything I want to share. I'm working on some stuff for Labor Day weekend now, but I should pull out some of the range stuff too. I wonder if we should start another thread now and then (part 2, 3, etc.) as this one might be getting a bit long in the download time for some.

What do you range-admirers think?

gansky1++8-1-2010-20-40-30.jpg
 
Love this thread guys!! I do think part II is a great idea as it is starting to take a short bit to download for me. Greg, is that beautiful Americana coming home to live at your house??
 
Santa is coming early!

Yay Hans, I bet you are really excited. Be sure and keep us posted!!
 
Americana

Greg, I knew a family in Lenoir who owned Home Electric Co.,which was an Electrical cotractor as well as a GE appliance dealer, their house had every thing original still in it in the 90s, I dont know if the current owners left anything original, but they had Woodtone brown GE appliances,and the range was the first generation Americana,with a narrow glass at the front that you looked into to look in the oven,they had the roll out DW,a bottom freezer fridge,and every NuTONE built in ever thought of, I was last in that house at their estate sale,so I dont know how it looks now,but always liked that model range.
 
Stratolounger

You can cook and nap at the same time! These are among the best ever made. The fridge will have the cool turn table shelves and there should be some metal detailing on the freezer door. Amazing! Do you plan to put them into service in your present kitchen?
 
Oh yeah!!

I have a good running fridge,but it looks terrible, a 63 Hotpoint,so the GE set is going in the kitchen,im using a Norge 30 range now,but it ,like all the other Norges ive had has oven rust issues,so im going to put in the yellow set, and probably paint the kitchen a contrasting color, maybe pink or turquoise! The GE fridge does have the rotating anodized shelves, and says Combination on the door, the whole kickplate is a chrome step pedal that opens the door. I also have a nice vintage NUTONE hood to install,it also has pushbuttons!
 
cant wait to visit again

Hans and Donald cant wait to see these installed, im trying now to get all my vintage pink kitchen stuff together to match my 61 mayfair pink Frigidaire thax again
 
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