Need Help Identifying Appliances/Electronics: Late 1950s

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frigilux

frigilux

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My dad built this little house (it was a house when we lived there, LOL) and the family moved into it in 1952 when my sister was in kindergarten. It's located in Watertown, SD on Hwy. 81, just off the downtown business area. I was born in '59 and we lived there until about April of 1965. It had a yard, flowers and a white picket fence to keep me from wandering onto the highway.

Sometime between 1957-1960 (depending on whose memory you trust the most) dad finished the basement and moved the kitchen and dining area down there.

Any help with identifying the make and year of these appliances and electronics will be greatly appreciated.

Photo 1: The house my dad built. All the other houses on the block were torn down and replaced with businesses. For whatever reason, our house remained and was converted to a business.

Photo 2: Wall oven--is it a Westinghouse? Any idea of the year? My sister, shown with me here, thinks the kitchen wasn't moved downstairs 'til 1960. I think it was moved before I was born in January of '59--maybe '57 or '58. Refrigerator: Brand? Year?

Photo 3: The Westinghouse roll-out built-in dishwasher is behind my dad in this photo. Can anyone ID the electric cooktop and range hood? If the oven in Photo 2 is a Westinghouse, then I would imagine the cooktop is also a Westy.

Photo 4: This is the living room. Can anyone ID the television? (Photo is my paternal grandfather, me, and our dog Tippy, who guarded me like a soldier on duty. I was her human, no two ways about it.)

Photo 5: This is our Magnavox stereo. Haven't found a photo of the inside, but my sister thinks we got it around 1957-58. I was obsessed with playing records and loved watching the unique record-changing system.

Photo 6: The clock on the wall. Any ideas? This is the dining area downstairs. We are all facing the kitchen. It was a big open space with a countertop separating the kitchen from the dining area, which is seen in Photo 2. I'm in the high chair, my sister Maria right behind me. Dad and Mom are standing behind my paternal grandfather. The woman on the right and her daughter on the left were close family friends. I think her husband is taking the photo.

Photo 7: Just found this photo; shows a better view of the apparently built-in refrigerator.

So far no photos of the basement utility room with a mid-50s Kenmore wringer washer and, of course, the 1960 Kenmore Model 80 pair I grew up with.

Thanks for any help you can provide with identification![this post was last edited: 10/10/2019-18:07]

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First of all, these are great family photos Eugene, thanks for sharing them. It’s clear that you were a happy and well loved little boy. The wall oven sure looks like a Westinghouse to me, probably 57’ or 58’ models. Sorry, but there aren’t enough identifying factors visible for me to tell what brands the refrigerator and TV, but making a guess I would say the fridge is also a Westinghouse probably a 59’, simply because the lettering on the freezer door has so many letters and my guess for the TV is an RCA. Logic would follow that if the wall oven is a Westinghouse the cooktop is also probably a Westy too. Both my Aunt Imogene and my Mom had Westy wall ovens and cooktop, and they were excellent.

Eddie[this post was last edited: 10/10/2019-17:59]
 
I agree

with Eddie about the TV, but am more certain. My maternal Grandparents had a very similar TV, but in the blonde wood popular in the 1950s.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
The reason I’m pretty sure the TV is an RCA is because in the mid 50’s they put the controls on the right side of the cabinets, while most other brands put the controls on the front of the sets. Also, the way the glass is covering the picture tube and the frame around the PT is just like the 56’ RCA console that we had.

Eddie
 
Great pictures!

I don't have anything to add to the possible manufacturers and dates, but your pictures are gorgeous! I want the family room curtains, please!

Your pictures are a wonderful time capsule. Thank you very much for sharing.

Sarah
 
TV brand / interesting twist

I actually think that TV is a HOTPOINT.
And as we all know Hotpoint marketed TVs for a short time in the late fifties. They did make console models.
Look at the badge at the bottom of the TV screen and compare to the badge of my range. You decide.

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TV

I agree with Paul about the Hotpoint TV. The logo was the first thing that I zoomed into. I will have to check some of my old advertising that I saved from our store. I must have something that would add to the mystery.
 
Nope

Do a little more research. Hotpoint TVs were marketed with side / top controls as well.
Also, virtually EVERY manufacturer in the 1950s copied the knobless-front styling. It was not an RCA-Victor exclusive.
I did peruse Hotpoint TV ads and did find a TV remarkably similar to the one shown. It is true though that Hotpoint TVs were manufactured by General Electric.
 
Nope

Do a little more research. Hotpoint TVs were marketed with side / top controls as well.
Also, virtually EVERY manufacturer in the 1950s copied the knobless-front styling. It was not an RCA-Victor exclusive.
I did peruse Hotpoint TV ads and did find a TV remarkably similar to the one shown. It is true though that Hotpoint TVs were manufactured by General Electric.
 
Thanks for your comments, input and help with identification, everyone! The photos definitely weren’t taken to focus on the appliances and electronics which made identification challenging. I’m still looking through envelopes of random old photos to see if I can find one showing the dishwasher and better shots of the cooktop/exhaust hood.

The holy grail will be a photo of the utility room (which doubled as my play room) with shots of the 1960 Kenmore pair and the Kenmore wringer washer.

The stand mixer is covered, but as I recall it may have been branded Montgomery Ward. Saw a photo of a Dormeyer in one of Louis’s threads of appliance ads and it looked just like our mixer. I think the coffeemaker—again, barely visible—was a GE.

My dad, who changed jobs frequently, worked for Montgomery Ward for awhile. There’s a smallish plastic cabinet TV on a cart in the dining area, which I think was MW-branded.

Note: I didn’t realize there were TVs branded Hotpoint!

Sarah: The living room drapes are wild, aren’t they? Very heavy, thick fabric. My mom eventually made some throws for the couch out of them.

Aside: You wouldn’t believe how many photos the dog (Tippy) is in—especially if I’m in it. Just noticed she’s peeking out from under the dining table near me in Photo #6. That dog followed me everywhere in the house and outside as well. If I hopped on my trike to cruise around the block, she’d trot along right beside me. She’d get uncomfortable if anyone but my mom, dad or sister was holding me. You can see it in Photo 4 where my grandfather is holding me. She was my personal body guard.[this post was last edited: 10/12/2019-23:33]
 
Three cheers for YouTubers! Here's the exact Collaro record changer found in the Magnavox in Photo #5 above. It's a 1958! Spent countless hours playing records on ours when I was a tyke. I found the changer fascinating. The way it sensed the size of the record was amazingly accurate and it had the most trouble-free adaptor for 45s that I've ever used. I played 45-rpm singles a lot because my sister's boyfriend worked at a radio station in Watertown, SD. KSDR, I believe it was. She or Wayne brought a big stack of singles to me every week. It was awesome! They went to college when I went into 1st grade, so the gravy train of vinyl ended at that point.

Photo #1: A better shot of the cooktop and exhaust hood. You can see the controls for the cooktop on the left side of it. There's a bit of what I'm assuming is the dishwasher right under my mom's elbow. Doesn't look like a Westy pullout, though, does it? Maybe I've been wrong about the DW this whole time. I do know that they had problems with me starting it up all the time. No child-lock controls back then.

Photo #2: I'm pretty sure this is a Montgomery Ward Airline TV on a cart, but maybe you TV enthusiasts can make a positive ID. I do recall the set met its demise when I was trying to push the cart to another room. The TV fell off and that was the end of that.
post was last edited: 10/13/2019-00:50]

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I do remember an RCA dealership in Watertown, because one day my dad and I went shopping and brought home one of these nifty RCA 45-only record changers for me--to save wear and tear on the Magnavox.

The little RCA was semi-automatic. It would change a stack of records, but it didn't know when to shut off. It would simply play the last record on the stack over and over until you turned it off manually.

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I had an RCA 45 record changer just like this one. You could plug these into a audio input jack in RCA TV’s and use the TV speaker too. Mine had belonged to my Grandpa, who used it every Christmas, along with a metal speaker, like the ones at Drive In restaurants in the 50’s, to play non stop Christmas carols in front of their house during the holidays.

I used it to play all the 45’s I bought with my weekly $1.00 allowance at Fowler’s Variety Store on Dam Rd. in El Sobrante, Calif. when I was in the 7th grade. I could get two for a dollar sometimes, but usually the newest and most popular ones were a dollar each.

Eddie[this post was last edited: 10/13/2019-21:30]
 
Range hood

Definitely a Nutone with push button control,I have one from 58, They were available with 2 fan assemblys, Either a rectangular box in the cabinet above with twin blowers in it or a single fan blade type.
 
My last post to this regard / Console TV is a Hotpoint

I suppose my forensic background is gnawing at me here. I think a common mistake by some is the presence of the chevron below the screen. RCA indeed used a chevron liberally when badging their electronic products, and that may easily make the TV look like an RCA at first glance.
However if you blow up the picture greatly (maybe my computer has a better capability of this) one can see a chevron with a red-colored insert and a dot of gold in the center.
That is what Hotpoint called “The Flying H “.
The Flying H is what Hotpoint called their logo.
Hard to detect and easily confusing.
 
Thanks again for everyone’s efforts at brand identification! The TV seems to be a point of debate. There’s even this matter: Is it spelled ‘Spartan’ (as in the the E-bay item Eddie posted) or ‘Sparton’ as it is in the link he posted.

I’ve asked my sister quite a number of questions, but she had no interest in appliances, so has either no memories or very hazy ones in that regard.

I sent some of the photos in this thread to her and the phone rang immediately. “Who in their right mind sets a birthday party for a six year old with Fostoria?!” (Photo #2 above) Hadn’t even noticed ‘til she brought it up. Yep...that’s our mom. At any rate, she and I focus on different things in the same photos, LOL.

A bit of background: Our parents had settled in Italy (they met while dad was there in WWII) but came to the States after my dad’s mom suffered a debilitating stroke in 1947. My mom was 7-1/2 months pregnant crossing the ocean in a Red Cross boat. Anyway, they thought they’d be in the States for six months to a year, at which time they’d return to their place in Italy.

It soon became clear that my grandfather would not be able to care for his wife, so dad built the house shown above less than two blocks from his parents’ home. The family had lived with my grandparents up to that point. My mom’s English was always pretty rough and she never did learn to read and write English; nor did she ever become a citizen. She always hoped they’d return to Italy.

The household spoke Italian until the nuns at the Catholic school told my folks they needed to speak English to help my sister’s language skills when she entered 1st grade. In fact, Tippy (the ever-present dog) learned all her commands in Italian from my mom.

Funny story: My grandfather suffered from dementia and was in a nursing home the last few years of his life—he passed in ‘64. The last time I saw him alive, I trotted up the hall ahead of my folks, burst into his room and shouted, “Hi, Grandpa!” Startled, he pulled the lower plate of his dentures out of his mouth and threw it full force, beaning me right in the face. I started crying loudly, of course, and when my dad entered the room, realizing what had just transpired, he said slowly and loudly, “Dad! It’s Eugene!”
 
We had two of those swivel chairs your granpa is sitting on back in the 50s and 60s, . I used to spin like crazy on them.. For years afterwards they sat in my parents basement rek room. When we bought our house in Calgary with the big floor to ceiling living room window I thought they would look great in there so a couple of years later in the late 90s I drove home for a visit (from Alberta to Ontario) and brought them home with me. I'd kept them all the years until Pip as a pup chewed on one so bad I had to toss it out 10 years ago,, THe other I still have but the springs are gone and it needs reupholstering badly, some day.. It's in the garage for now.
 
Eugene,

I didn’t even notice the difference in the spelling of “Sparton” vs “Spartan”. I think the correct spelling must be with an “o”, as thats how its spelled in the advertisement. Probably the guy that put together the Photo Fact Folder used the Greek spelling of Spartan, but I would bet the rent that these TV’s are one in the same.

I can barely make out the “V” insignia with the small dash of red in the center in the photo of your family TV, as Paul pointed out. But all the ads that I saw for 1956-57 Hotpoint TV’s, the sets all had the controls on the front, except for maybe one of the portables. And I don’t believe that the Hotpoint logo was at the bottom of the picture tube frames in any of the photos. So, based on this I really do think that your set was a Spatron, “The Campbell” model, rather than either an RCA or a Hotpoint.

Thanks for sharing the story of your family history. Do you still speak any Italian? My husband David’s family on his fathers side is Italian-Swiss, they came from Northern Italy in 1849 during the Gold Rush, and instead of panning for gold the started a dairy ranch in West Marin Co. David knows a few words, mostly “basta” and “finito” when we wants me to stop beating the dead horse, and now I use these words too. LOL.

I was raised around Italians all my life, all my parents best friends were Italian. Its a culture I have a great affinity for.

Eddie
[this post was last edited: 10/14/2019-19:26]
 
And as if there wasn’t enough question about the brand of Eugene’s childhood TV, I have found yet another possibility, a 1956 Magnavox. And this one looks even more like Eugenes’ photo. But since Sparton was a subsidiary of Magnavox, its not a surprise that they both look very similar The finish on the Magnavox appears lighter than the Sparton, and more like the photo in question.

Eddie

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