The Real "Magic Chef"

[launderess]

For your chilly winter evening viewing pleasure.

This house is to die for!

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/the-way-they-live/2014/big-old-houses-magic-chef-really[this post was last edited: 2/9/2016-01:03]

 

[petek]

Wonderful

 

 

[travis]

That house and the owner is wonderful.

 

[askolover]

such a beautiful house!  Some Magic Chefs used to be made 30 miles from me in Franklin, TN.  Now it's a shopping/antiques mall called The Factory at Franklin.  Next time I go I'll take some pictures of the vintage stoves sitting in the entrance.  As the pictures on the website below scroll, the second one has "Magic Chef" painted on the water tower.

http://factoryatfranklin.com/history/

 

[launderess]

That house and the owner is wonderful.

Both it and she certainly are....



@askolover

American Stove Company/Magic Chef was sold to Dixie Products in Cleveland, TN before Maytag got their mitts on the things. After Whirlpool purchased Maytag they sold MC off to some one else.

 

[pulltostart]

Laundress

What a wonderful story.  Thank you so very much for providing the link!  That house is just incredible; I can't imagine actually living there.  Loved the picture of the kitchen sink, complete with the dog's water bowl beneath - real people indeed.

 

lawrence

 

[launderess]

They do hold weddings at the "Magic Chef" mansion

Besides the tours....

http://sandbox.zettlphoto.com/magic-chef-mansion-wedding-sarah-joel/

Would love to see how the area looked when the house was first built. You can see from some of these and other photos that the area seems very built up now. Especially that large apartment building behind the mansion.

http://laduenews.mycapture.com/myca...3&event=1484778&CategoryID=49387&pSlideshow=1

Interesting thing about the architecture is just like many old NYC residential buildings only the façade and perhaps sides of the MCM are decorated. The rear is rather plain. So the front has curb appeal meanwhile round back....

 

[tomturbomatic]

Funny to see that antique bed pan on the corner shelf in the bathroom.

 

[jamiel]

Having grown up in St. Louis had never heard of this...sounds like the family had it till 1991 so the family probably led a quiet life. The private places there are a quintessential St. Louis thing where the old families lived.

 

[norgeway]

Magic Chef was first sold to Dortch in about 55

In 58 Dixie bought them, and eventually quit making Dixies and just made magic Chefs.

 

[launderess]

Quiet life

Well the last daughter died in 1990 or 1991 at 90 something years old, so guess indeed she led a quite life for the last decade or decades of her life.

If you examine pictures of the house before renovations by previous owner it is clear the property had been on the decline for years previously.

Faded grandeur is what comes to my mind. Various Internet postings mention the "neglected" state of the place when the last daughter died in 1990.

Cannot get over how much there is on the Web about this house and the family. You'd have thought they were royalty! *LOL*

http://tedwight.typepad.com/st_louis_real_estate_blog/2007/09/the-magic-chef-.html

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/...cle_247c5de4-30b7-588c-82be-498ced6bec69.html

 

[jamiel]

There was a good bit of faded grandeur in the city of St. Louis (recall that the city of St. Louis is not the same as St. Louis County; which is suburbia) during the 70s-80s. A couple of points: the owner's dad was the head of Southwestern Bell, which was based in St. Louis until about 1990 (rather odd that you could look into the Illinois Bell territory from the Southwestern Bell HQ until HQ was moved to San Antonio); and the German burghers of St. Louis during the 20s-30s were quite wealthy and ostentatious (the Busch family, the Griesedick family, ...). There's a book on the making of the Joy of Cooking, Stand Facing the Stove, which discusses this interestingly (Irma Rombauer was widowed during the depression by her husband's suicide, but was a bit of a clubwoman in the German community).

 

[travis]

St. Louis City has numerous pockets of these wonderful old homes.  In St. Louis County, University City also has a large number of fine old homes, along with Webster Groves and Florissant. 

 

It's not just the St. Louis area, people used to manufacture here, live in the town they manufactured in and employed people locally.

 

I have visited the Magic Chef mansion.  It's a really special place, even when I've spent the most time in the kitchen.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Irma Rombauer

A wonderful and very creative friend wrote this in a birthday card he made for me decades ago:

Child of Irma Rombauer
Fathered by James Beard
Cradled in the kitchen
And near the oven reared,
To Tommy on his birthday
This loving ode I make
His friends may light the candles
But he'll bake his own damn cake.