vintage Spark 42" gas wood water heater stove

[xpanam]

Anyone with info on this stove? Very interesting.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/app/3234138370.html

 

[wayupnorth]

I never heard of that brand name. But growing up, many of the older homes in this area had similar gas cooking and left side room heaters although mostly stinky kerosene instead of wood. Alot of families also had a seperate storage tank behind the stove with a coil that ran around the firebox and heated the domestic hot water during the winter. You obviously could not have the heater part going in the summer. The ones with the center ovens, like this one, could bake using either gas or radiant heat from the left side heater. Only problem with stoves like this is you had to have a chimney connection and they basically took up an entire kitchen wall, sticking way out into the room for the wall clearance.

 

[rp2813]

Spark Stoves were manufactured by the Hammer-Bray Company in Oakland California.  I don't think they were a national brand and the highest concentration of them is likely to be found in the SF Bay Area.  There is very little information about them on line.

 

Locals may or may not realize that as they travel up the Nimitz Freeway into Oakland, the narrow stretch that passes between two ancient brick walls is slicing through what remains of the old Spark factory.