The Frigidaire Appliance Design Center in 1957!

[Unimatic1140]

This morning's Blog post on Product Stat is a fascinating article on the people who created Frigidaire appliances in the mid 1950s. Until I read this piece I had absolutely no idea that Frigidaire did their design and style creation in Detroit, not in Dayton, Ohio! And the reason they decided on the color Charcoal Gray was completely different than I would have ever imagined.

You can see the blog post here:

Frigidaire Design Center

UGH! Talk about a dream job!

When I make a blog post like this where I believe the post will be of great interest and the article has great images such as this one, I will post the article both to Product Stat and a high-resolution copy of the original to Automatic Ephemera in case anyone wants a permanent download or wants to be able to print any of the images in high-resolution.

Again I have 100's of more articles to add to the Product Stat Blog and I will be trying to add new articles daily to the site for a while. If there is an article you like and you are a Facebook user, please click the like button at the bottom of the article. Clicking the like button on any article you enjoy will help me greatly in determining what types of articles everyone likes so I can concentrate more on that type of subject matter.

Thanks everyone!

 

[funktionalart]

I LIVE for this sort of stuff...

thanks for putting this out for everyone

 

[bluejay]

I agree with Allen; this is fantastic! Thank you for sharing this! I'm enamored with 50s and 60s Frigidaire; it's cool to see how their design process worked.

 

[pulltostart]

Very interesting!  Thanks for sharing, Robert.  I can't help but wonder how design/engineering today would compare.  I just can't imagine "design" and "styling" having as much importance as when the Sheer Look was birthed.

 

It's scarey to look at today's new appliance offerings and think about Carley Simon's line "these are the good ol days".

 

lawrence

 

[chachp]

Imagine..

Can you imagine what these folks would think about the tools we have today like 3D printers?

 

[danemodsandy]

Just In Case....

Anyone doesn't know what the reference to the "GM Technical Center" means, it means the enormous creative campus designed for GM by Eero Saarinen. It is mind-boggling.

Google it sometime and you'll see what I mean.

 

[appnut]

I agree with what prompted them to select Charcoal Gray.  A new alternative to white that's neutral.  What's old is new again!!!

 

[jamiel]

The Tech Center is quite a sight. It's not quite itself right now...flooded last week (of the 19000 people who work there about 1/4 are still not back because of flooding). You can really see this type of thing happening there...

 

[petek]

The things you learn here,

I drive thru the 696 Mound Rd exit a few times a month and had no idea it was only a few blocks up the road. Now I'll have to go take a look for myself.

 

[Unimatic1140]

The official address of the tech center is 30001 Van Dyke Ave - Warren, MI 48093. If you fly over it in Google or Bing Maps you can see the round dome is still there.

Scroll through some of the images for the tech center, it's quite cool...

http://https//www.google.com/search?q=general+motors+technical+center&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=mf3zU9TgH4GNyATTnYDwDQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg&biw=1920&bih=961#imgdii=_

 

[danemodsandy]

I Would Have Loved....

Being there for the Tech Center's grand opening, which I wrote about for Modernism some years ago.

Among other fun goings-on, Dinah Shore was flown out for the festivities. As everyone knows, Dinah was the star of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, and therefore indispensable to the proceedings.

* MWAH! *

P.S.: To give you youngsters an idea of how heavily GM relied upon Dinah to push Chevrolets at the time, take a gander at this 1959 commercial. Dinah's mega-professionalism is on full display here - she's lip-synching while driving an Impala convertible to musical counts and hitting camera marks, all of it done on location, not faked in a studio. Dinah looks gorgeous and carefree the whole time. As well anyone might with a gaggle of hunks riding with her!

http://https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbSLq3FEE9o

 

[arbilab]

Robert, this is a TERRIFIC feature.

 

[jetcone]

OH MY GAWD

What a Dream Job that would have been ! Now if Marketing could have only done its job we'd still have GE Frigidiare !!

So I wonder now just how rare these Charcoal pair are sitting in my basement ?? If they were playing with Charcoal in 1957 that didn't leave much time to make charcoal appliances in the 1957 model year !

What a find Robert

 

[beekeyknee]

I wonder if all the designs and specs are stored away in those buildings somewhere? Wouldn't it be fun to go looking around in there?

 

[danemodsandy]

Brian:

GM keeps most everything.

If you restore a GM car, you often see GM Authorized Reproduction parts for sale. That is a GM-authorized program where aftermarket suppliers license the original tech drawings and sometimes get to lease the original tooling.

This gives GM a nice little revenue stream and gives them an outreach to vintage car buffs, since GM repro parts are often sold through GM dealers' parts counters. It also gives them control over quality, offering the consumer the same or higher quality than the car had originally. Aftermarket repro parts can vary dramatically in fit and quality, as anyone who has tried to restore a car can tell you.

 

[moparguy]

Fascinating thread! What an amazing design campus, it would have been exciting to see all the 'newest of new' being developed in the 50s and 60s. I had thought that someone had mentioned the tie-in of GM styling between automobiles and appliances... I have brochures for the 1955 stoves and 1955 refrigerators, and both emphasize the tie in with GM autos. The refrigerator brochure has a Corvette on the cover, and the stove brochure has a Cadillac. Best is the text on the stove brochure, "Only General Motors Stylists -- with a background of building breathtaking beauty into Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Chevrolet -- could have created for you the beautiful new Frigidaire Electric Ranges. For here is design that matches the most exciting cooking conveniences Frigidaire has ever offered -- design that literally surrounds these new carefree cooking features with a master touch of chromium and color. Here, in the broad sweep of the color-keyed control panel -- and in the spirit-lifting colors of the cabinets themselves -- here is design that will brighten or blend in with any kitchen. This is how Good Looking... Good Cooking can be!"

 

[nurdlinger]

That silver dome at the GM Tech Center

The dome is a theatre/auditorium. Several times when I was a kid in the 50s I got to see films in it. These were the incredible, boosterish, great-big-beautiful-tomorrow shining-at-the-end-of-every-day things but I cannot recall any certain one.