Vintage Laundromat Photos

[bendixmark]

Dexters

Picture 18 in part one is my idea of heaven.I love those dexter/bendix machines brings back happy memories of the 80s for me .I used to love to visit Laundromats that had those on a sunday.I now have a dexter machine exactly like the ones in the picture.Thank you Kevin for this thread it is my favorite.

 

[potatochips]

Great thread, Kevin! I really enjoyed the colours and decor of some of these laundromats! I also really liked seeing GE FFs in coin op flavor.

 

[launderess]

"All the schlepping of wet washing ..."

If you are referring to picture #6 in first set, that was taken in a wash house, not a laundromat per se, and likely was somewhere in Europe. IIRC that picture may have been taken in UK.

Once American laundromats moved from hand powered wringers or using wringer washing machines to top loaders things were by and large fully automatic. Some places did offer "extractors", which were large spin dryers, but that was due to the poor extraction of top loaders (and even the front loaders that were on offer then), in order to speed up drying time.

Remember early Bendix and other front loaders didn't have suspension systems, so they needed to be bolted into floor. But they did spin even if at low rpms compared to modern H-axis washers.

 

[kd12]

Glasgow Steamie

Launderess, that UK photo was taken in a Glasgow laundry/bath house. I had to do an image search to figure out what was going on there. If you Google "Glasgow steamie" you come up with a bunch of these, and from as late as the 60s even. Apparently Scotland was pretty economically backward even long after the war.

 

[launderess]

UK Wash Houses

We've done them before here in the group several times.

See: http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?73457

Yet more:



Amazing to think wash house shown above was still in operation at 1971 when film was made.

However there were plenty of modern laundryettes about as well:



Interestingly but not surprisingly in UK wash houses were on same site as public baths. Makes sense in a way in that both required large amounts of water and modern (for their time) indoor plumbing. Not something every home had in late 1800's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_and_wash_houses_in_Britain

https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1447/detail/

Extensive list of UK bath and wash houses, part of a quite good website.

http://www.bathsandwashhouses.co.uk/archive/your-local-buildings/

 

[bendixmark]

Reply #12

Those are tombstone bendixes.I have 2 of them one nice one and one for parts to fix 2 others.Kevin I promised you some time ago I would post pics of mine and I will as soon as I get my computer straight.

 

[cuffs054]

Those were some well feed chilrens.

 

[launderess]

Steady diet of treacle sponge, chips and other foods fried in lard or whatever ought to do it.

Have you ever watched "Two Fat Ladies?" Some of those dishes prepared were standard school dinners during the 1960's and 1970's.

 

[mayken4now]

Wonderful Thread

Thanks for taking time Kevin. Brought back a few memories. Very nice!

Launderess. The term "wash house" is very commonly used in southern Louisiana still. Mostly citing the Cajun Folks.

 

[cornutt]

Kevin's #8 was an absolutely typical Norge Village. The one here was, to my memory, nearly identical down to the paneling -- I think the floor was probably different, but that's it. I might have even seen some of those clothes... And note that #8-10 are all Norge self service dry cleaning machines.

 

[Unimatic1140]

Another good one to add to this collection in this thread!

 

[luxflairguy]

I've never hear of Breeze or Trend brands. Any idea of machine brands?

 

[launderess]

Breeze was a budget brand detergent from Lever Bros. Key to their fame was boxes included a free Canon towel as give away. Of course that towel ate into how much product could be put in box.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeze_detergent

Trend is another budget brand made by Henkel/Dial Corp

https://www.trenddetergent.com/powder-detergents/trend-classic-powder

Origianlly a Purex product introduced in 1946 as a light duty powdered detergent. Trend morphed over the years into a general wash day product the rest is here.

"In 1982, Purex Industries, Inc. was acquired in a leveraged buyout by Gibbons, Green and van Amerongen Ltd., the predecessor of Leonard Green & Partners.[6][7] In 1985, the household and consumer products business of Purex Industries, Inc. was acquired by Greyhound Corporation[8] and was combined with Greyhound's Armour-Dial to form The Dial Corporation. By the 1990s, Purex would discontinue its bleach product to focus on laundry detergents."

https://www.ebay.com/itm/294172864698?hash=item447e11b0ba:g:k0cAAOSwER1gm-vO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purex_(laundry_detergent)

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Trend still is a brand today.
IIRC only liquid form now but until a couple years back it still came in powder form.
The brand is a Dial Brand subsidiary of Henkel now totally Henkel.
Looks like it was common in the North East area, NYC area.
Could see lots of powder packets displayed in shop's windows in the Queens or Harlem back in 2016...and tried it out. Not bad but not even impressed.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Breeze is still a Unilver brand in some countries
I tried Jamaican Breeze and it was very good!

 

[kenmoreguy89]

I'm also curious

Robert what's the washers brand in your pic?

 

[luxflairguy]

Thank you Laundress!

 

[rpms]

My mom,grandmother and aunt all used Breeze detergent just for the free towels. They came in pink,green,yellow and blue floral. Not the greatest towel but they seem to last. My cousin still has a couple of her mom's. They seem to be heavy on harvest gold and green. You had to wait forever to get the nice pink and blue. You could take the towel out of the box and it was so heavy ladden with soap you could toss it in the wash and didn't have to add detergent.
At the end they started only putting wash clothes in.

 

[circlew]

Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner did  TV commercials for Breeze in the early 70's.

 

This was not a detergent my mom bought very often, as she didn't think it was a good value. We had good towels and washcloths, so didn't need to get any in a box of detergent. I remember asking her to get a box that contained a Cannon washcloth, which she did. If the cloth was even half as thick as the Cannon washclothes we already had, I'd be surprised. We used it, but it didn't take long until it was threadbare. I don't think she used the Breeze in the washer much, but it got used for mopping the basement floor, cleaning porch furniture, etc.

 

[adam-aussie-vac]

Here is the only vintage laundromat I’ve been to

Unfortunately the house closed got taken over by a mean old bat

 

[adam-aussie-vac]

Oh sorry, I meant for it to say place not house

My bad

 

[chachp]

Ironing board.

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">I never saw a laundromat with an ironing board.  Is that common there?</span>

 

[gansky1]

#40 - Looks like Norge washers there. 

 

 

Ironing - 

 

There is an old coin laundry store in Minneapolis that has coin operated ironing equipment, a steam flat press, etc.  Robert and I stood and watched a couple of ladies press nearly all of their laundry, t-shirts, jeans, etc.  It was fascinating and all of the clothes looked so neat and crisp.

The washers were still double-load Bendix/Dexter.  

 

 

[adam-aussie-vac]

It’s quite rare and this

Was in attended laundromat which probably explains why there was an ironing board in front of the two vintage Westinghouse washers

 

[seedub]

Reply# 48

Breeze offered a free gift inside the box - towels. Mrs. Parton was so cute the way she'd say "daisiz" (sic).

 

[Unimatic1140]

Yes those are Norge solid-tub coin-op washers in the picture I posted.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Norge

Oh yeah. Dang! I kind of forgot about those that did the magic minute thing and had the glass on the lid

 

[tomturbomatic]

Was Snorge the only top loader with a spring-loaded lid?

 

[appnut]

If Whirlpool had any coin-laundry units in the late 1950s, wouldn't theirs have been spring-loaded? I remember our Norge solid-tub models that we went to in like 1962 or 1963 wasn't spring-loaded.

 

[Unimatic1140]

My '59 Philco also has a spring loaded lid, which makes the lid seem like it weighs next to nothing to open.