Montgomery Wards

[trainguy]

Windsor Dryer

 

[trainguy]

neat

 

[trainguy]

lighted controls

 

[scott55405]

Very nice! Is this a Westinghouse made machine? Is "Windsor" another trade name Wards used? I'm not familiar with it.

 

[goatfarmer]

The scrapyard I go to has a Wards Windsor washer sitting there. Little bit different in the console.

 

[trainguy]

Scott, I'm not familiar with this at all. I'm sure that somebody else will know.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Yes, for a long time, Westinghouse made appliances for Wards. There were, as you know, the regular size Westinghouse washers and dryers and the smaller models based on the Space Mates. In about 1956, WH introduced the smaller washer as a portable with the drop down door. The trim was the same copper color as the 56 GE appliances used. The control dial was on top, centered at the back. If you wished to install it under the counter, the timer was repositioned so that the dial was on the front like a Space Mate. I have seen the WH washer so that is what this machine is based on, but we did not have Wards in Atlanta, so I only saw the Windsor machines for a few seconds in 1959, I believe, thanks to parents who did not want to have their son looking at washing machines. I do not know if the larger Windsor washers and dryers were slant fronts, but the Wards combo was an air flow Westinghouse with a slant front. It was much plainer looking, like the first WH combo with a round window and the red knobs, when the WH combo was sporting the black square panels behind the wash and dry dials and the trapezoidal trim around the window. The condenser WH combos washed the lint down the drain, either during the dry cycle or in the next wash so the vented Wards combo had no lint screen and just blew lint out the vent, making flocked shrubbery possible all year long. Maybe Wards sold a lint filter in a housing that screwed to the back panel over the vent hole.

 

[appnut]

tom there was a question about that "portable" Westy a few weeks back, dont' remembernow where it was, but I don't think you saw it and I even asked for ya. Glad ya gave the lesson today

 

[tomturbomatic]

Sorry, I did not see it nor did I see any related discussion.

 

[scott55405]

Thanks Tom! I wonder why a city the size of Atlanta did not have Montgomery Wards. I remember you saying that in the past as well.

 

[appnut]

Tom, unfortunately it was buried within a thread. I almost emailed ya and I should have listened to my gut feeling and done so.

 

[frontaloadotmy]

I have that dryer

and a Westinghouse that look like many components were done in the same mold. The Windsor is definitely a shrubbery flocker. Mine are both wired for 110 volts. The timer and
element on the windsor are out of commission, but it was nice
when the little console pane was lit.

 

[pturo]

Nice knobs on that old girl!

 

[jeb]

wards catalog

I have an old Wards catalog that has pictures of Wards laundry equipment that looks very much like this dryer.

 

[appnut]

Tom, unfortunately it was buried within a thread. I almost emailed ya and I should have listened to my gut feeling and done so.

 

[jamiel]

Wards had spotty retail coverage targeted pretty much on their catalogue business...for instance they had stores in Kansas City and Chicago, but never St. Louis (and never Atlanta). There's an interesting Harvard Business School case on Sears versus Wards immediately post-WW2...Sears "turned on the gas" and opened stores right after the war (and so was right on top of the suburbanization of the US in the late 40s/early 50s and got into all the malls being built in that time frame)...Wards was led by a really autocratic CEO who believed there would be a depression after the war, so by 1952, I think, they had fewer stores than they did in 1942, and didn't get into mall-based retail until about 1960 or so, which they finally did in a very focused manner and were relatively successful (did a clustering strategy in certain metros where they'd been strong...Kansas City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles/San Francisco, Washington DC).

JC Penney had a different problem...strong small-town cash-based dry-goods business, not mall-based, credit based or catalogue. Bought a catalogue business in ca 1962 (it was the first computerized catalog business as compared to Sears/Wards), moved into malls as they went hard-lines also in the early 60s (interesting that they never did a catalog-based hardlines business like Sears/Wards...the catalogue business they bought was more apparel/soft home based).

jl

 

[gansky1]

Very fun dryer - I wonder how long it was in use and what the owner thought of it...

 

[scott55405]

Interesting Jamiel...Wards was big in Minnesota where I was from, there was even a catalog distribution center there. Sears had one too. You could call the Wards that had the distribution center and place a catalog order, and pick it up 90 minutes later! We also had some of the small catalog/hardlines stores much like Sears had. My father liked work clothes, lawn and garden equipment, and tires from Wards.

I guess Penney's was in the hard lines business then for a relatively short period of time, as most of it disappeared in the early 1980s. They tended to have a lot of smaller softlines only stores in strip malls and such too, in addition to the larger mall (and in our case, downtown) stores. It's interesting to note, however, that they were the last to get into the catalog business and now are the only ones left!

 

[sudsman]

knobs

The knobs look just like the ones on the old spacemates I bet the glass looks the same too.