A Great New Article - Built to last...

**debgro** · February 16th, 2006, 01:09 AM

Hi All,

Here's an article I found today that I thought everyone would enjoy. I put the link at the bottom if you'd like to go to the original page.

Deb

Newsday.com

Built to last
Now they?re cookin? ? again ? with Chambers, Calorics, Glenwoods and other vintage stoves

BY CAROL POLSKY
STAFF WRITER

February 16, 2006

When Marian and Larry Thomsen moved into their Rockville Centre home 26 years ago, they found a General Electric stove in the kitchen. It had been built in 1950, and its rounded white porcelain shape was right at home amid the period white metal cabinets and stainless-steel countertops.

"I've grown to appreciate it," said Thomsen, an elementary school teaching assistant and adult art instructor who loves to cook and bake. "In my opinion, this is a kitchen with character. If I replace the stove, I lose the whole integrity of my kitchen, and I'm not ready to do that."

Not only that: The stove's porcelain is as white as the day it was made, she said, and when she sets the oven at 350 degrees, it goes to 350 degrees and stays there. "It's well insulated."

Thomsen is far from alone in her appreciation of old stoves. While most homeowners can't wait to renovate their kitchens with gleaming new luxury stoves, or with modern four-burners, a growing number are turning in the other direction.

Looking to the past, they find stoves built of cast iron and steel, with legs and without, with chrome and nickel and bakelite. They find stoves built to last.

The General Electrics from the '40s and '50s. The sought-after Chambers stoves, manufactured between the 1920s and the 1950s. The six-burner Magic Chefs and Glenwoods and Calorics and O'Keefe & Merritts from turn-of-the-century to mid-century. The aqua and pink Sears models from the '50s, as curvaceous and chromed as a Chevrolet.

There's a world out there of passionate dealers and collectors, some with Web sites, as well as clubs with newsletters and repair resources. The old stoves show up on TV, sparking interest, most recently on the Food Network's "30 Minute Meals" show, where Rachael Ray uses a yellow Chambers from the 1950s. Retro stoves heated up the sets of "Friends," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Murder, She Wrote."

Loving old stoves

Mark Satlof isn't sure how he got hooked on old stoves, but thinks it started when he used one in a previous apartment. "I just loved cooking with it. It gives you an out-of-time feeling when you're cooking on a stove that's 50 years old."

Satlof, 41, a public relations executive representing musicians, found his current stove on eBay, buying the six-burner Caloric from a woman who bought it new in 1948. He and wife, Dana, renovated their Harlem brownstone, and "I built the kitchen around the stove."

The cabinets are white, with period hinges and hardware. The old enamel sink was purchased in Pennsylvania. He copied details, like the shelf over the sink, from catalogs and brochures from the 1940s, and he chose classic bright red tiles for the backsplash. The diner-style booth has red leather seats dyed to match the tiles, and there's old diner-style scalloped metal edging the countertops.

The style, however, is more timeless than slavish, he said, and while the stove is vintage, the refrigerator is a Sub-Zero. His wife prefers to bake in a modern electric wall oven, and they also use a built-in electric wok. But, oh, that stove: "By the mid-'50s, the stoves were losing that curviness. I like the curves. They have a real deco look," Satlof said. "These things are solid. They're made out of steel and they weigh a ton. They're built like battleships ... really built to last."

The craftmanship of the old stoves is what draws many collectors, said Richard Richardson, of Good Time Stoves in Goshen, Mass., where he repairs and sells vintage stoves. "Initially it starts with love for iron and that industry," he said, "and the art and craftsmanship that went into building them. It can never be surpassed. It was a wonderful industry. ... It's just a lost art."

There were thousands of regional stove companies with foundries making and shipping stoves in the first half of the 20th century, and, until the 1960s, they were built with parts meant to be repaired rather than replaced. Many models have run flawlessly with minimal repairs over decades. Getting parts can be problematic, but less so with the advent of the Internet.

Marian Thomsen said her GE stove needs few repairs, which her husband, Larry, does himself, using parts bought from a dealer who stockpiled them for numerous stoves installed in post-World War II Levittown homes. Satlof purchased another Caloric, for $100, which he had dismantled for parts.

There are professionals, like Frank Grogan of Massachusetts, who will do repairs in the home or in their shops. Grogan will even make housecalls in New York to do minor repairs and evaluations.

Grogan said that all vintage stoves must have safety valves installed to prevent gas leaks in case the pilot light goes out, and he may install modern electronic control panels into vintage models in areas where they won't be seen, but otherwise he just cleans, greases, calibrates and restores them.

Many old appliances are economical to run, said Jack Santoro, who founded the Old Appliance Club for afficionados, and sells and repairs appliances out of Southern California (his company will even fabricate replacement parts). Old stoves are so well insulated, in many cases, that at least one brand, the Chambers range (built independently from 1912 to 1955) advertised itself as the "range that cooks with the gas turned off." After the food in the oven has cooked for a while, it, indeed, continues to cook in the heated, closed oven with the gas off.

Appealing old refrigerators

Santoro's own 1935 and 1936 GE model refrigerators have "never ever been repaired, not for anything," he said. "The quality of the components are so good, and they're cheap to run because they don't have any unnecessary extras."

Those "unnecessaries" include the heater and fan used in modern refrigerators to keep the freezer defrosted, but he doesn't mind defrosting every month-and-a-half or so. Grogan said he used to sell refrigerators, too, but they are less popular than old stoves. They have a small capacity and, because they need to be defrosted, "the reality is they are inconvenient."

That doesn't bother Paul Silchenstedt, 49, an arborist and passionate collector of old things in Glen Cove. He, and wife, Marlin, and daughter, Diana, live in a 1929 house with a big 1929 six-burner, two-oven Magic Chef he bought in Sea Cliff and installed on the hearthstone in his kitchen.

The 1929 GE monitor-top refrigerator with the compressor coil on top finally broke down, and he replaced it with a 1942 GE Deluxe model. They sit in a kitchen with cabinets and red Formica countertops installed in 1962, accessorized with vintage clocks and dishes and tables. "We had an old Chambers range in the kitchen," he said of his childhood in Roslyn, "and we used to play cards there. It was the warmest room in the house."

Now, he finds an almost spiritual feeling in his love for old things: the 11 or so vintage typewriters, the old sewing machines and alarm clocks, the iron beds they sleep in and the stoves and refrigerators he collects. He restored and stores a beautiful red Chambers range for a friend whose mother originally owned it.

He's been keeping it for her for eight years. "She said she could never sell it. The soul of her mother is in there."
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

[url="http://www.newsday.com/features/home/ny-home-vintagestovescov,0,4170845,print.story?coll=ny-homegarden-headlines"]http://www.newsday.com/features/home/ny-home-vintagestovescov,0,4170845,print.story?coll=ny-homegarden-headlines[/url]

**ha_asfan** · February 16th, 2006, 03:18 AM

It's all true ! It's the crazy advertising society we dwell in that makes obsolete perfectly good items.

lowracer · February 16th, 2006, 05:39 AM

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ March 10, 2006 12:15 AM: Message edited by: lowracer ]</font>

**treatmaker** · February 16th, 2006, 01:09 PM

Hey,

I just read the article. I isn't anything we don't know already! Chipper - if you log on to Newsday.com the article has a picture of Paul from Little Geezers.

Treatmaker

**chipperhiker** · February 16th, 2006, 10:58 PM

I was just at that site and reread the article, but I didn't see any photos. I was pretty excited to see Paul's name, though. Am I doing something wrong? Do I actually need to register at the site to see the photos?

-jenn