Older wall oven broiler

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fan-of-fans

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I’ve noticed a lot of older mobile homes here in Florida from the 60s and 80s had separate cooktop with wall oven next to it. Some gas and some electric.

I think most of these are Magic Chef. But I’ve noticed the ovens usually have two doors, larger one on top and smaller door on the lower. Usually with the gas ones the lower compartment is the broiler.

My question is did the electric ones actually have two baking ovens, or is the lower smaller one a broiler setup with the element under the top compartment. Like how a gas one would be set up with the burner for the oven also serving as the broiler.
 
I don't know much about Magic Chef electric ovens, as I consider them to be an inferior brand. The local GE dealer was also a Magic Chef dealer for several years, and I never saw even one built-in electric oven or cooktop on display that wasn't a GE; only gas Magic Chef units.

I do know that Frigidaire built-in electric double ovens had a smaller lower oven, and some other brands may also have. At least 75% of all wall ovens I've seen have been either GE or Hotpoint, with Frigidaire about 15%, and Westinghouse making up most of the remainder.

One of my mom's friends had a very deluxe double wide custom manufactured back in 1980, which had GE built-in double ovens in Harvest Wheat. One of my relatives in MS had a double wide from around 1975 that had a Frigidaire built-in single oven in Avocado. Any other MH I saw was usually gas.
 
Magic chef, built 24 inch electric wall oven

Magic chef made a very popular 24 inch double oven, the lower oven was a little smaller and had just a bake element not a broiler so you could bake in it. It didn’t bake as well as the top oven because it didn’t have the broiler to add top heat

When Maytag bought magic chef, this oven also appeared with the Maytag and JennAir names.

It wasn’t a great oven but it got the job done.

John.
 
Tappan oven

That Tappan oven reminds me of the stove my family had when I was a young child.

 

 

We had a Simpson freestanding stove that was badged "Simpson by Tappan" or "Tappan by Simpson", I can't remember which way round it was. Tappan wasn't a brand in Australia, it was obviously Simpson had a licensing agreement with Tappan in the US to use designs and/or components. The handles on the wall oven above were identical to the handles on our Simpson, with the Tappan lettering on the black upper handle.

 

My grandmother bought two of these stoves, the fancy model with a clock was her gift for my mother, she bought a simpler, more basic one for herself. The stoves had a glass panel for the "dashboard" with very tall slender knobs for each dial, a fine red pointer behind the glass for each knob, and only three settings for each top element - High, Medium and Low. Like most Australian stoves of the era, there was a separate griller (US term is broiler) <span style="text-decoration: underline;">above</span> the oven and a storage drawer underneath. It also had a power outlet on the splashback, with silver toggle switch for the oven light. The stoves were white enamel finish and 54 cm (21 inches) wide, which is "normal" size in Australia.

 

IIRC (it was a looong time ago..) there were only two round coil elements on the top, plus the two rectangular griller elements were visible at the top, you could remove the aluminium covers and cook on them as extra surface elements, or place the reflective covers on to use the griller below. If there was a boilover, the mess would fall through to the griller tray underneath.

 

Our home didn't have a power outlet in the bathroom, so Mum would sometimes use a hair dryer in the kitchen. One day I came home from school and Mum had been using the hair dryer plugged in to the power outlet on the Simpson stove, but the nearest element was still hot from previous cooking and the plastic insulation on the hair dryer cord had started to melt. Mum didn't notice and when she went to remove the dryer plug, she got an electric shock. I ran to the fuse board and disconnected the stove so we could unplug the hair dryer. The stove was replaced soon after with a crappy Westinghouse. Power outlets are required to have a switch in Australia but this stove didn't have a switched outlet - probably a legacy of its American Tappan roots. It would have been a 60 or 61 model, this may have pre-dated the requirement for switched outlets.

 

And more on topic - wall ovens with a griller underneath are very common in Australia. We tend to have two styles of built in oven: a "wall oven" is taller, mounted higher, and generally has a griller underneath; and an "underbench" oven that fits below the counter and is just a single oven cavity, European brands are popular.

Having just typed that and looking online for images, I see Westinghouse also have some underbench ovens with a separate griller <span style="text-decoration: underline;">above</span> the oven...

 




 

 
 

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