Vintage stoves get a new lease on life...

The Times-Picayune
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Vintage stoves get a new lease on life at a place in Port Allen, where business is bubbling post-Katrina

Thursday, September 14, 2006
By Judy Walker
Food editor

PORT ALLEN -- Go down U.S. 190, past the sugar cane fields, and turn into the parking lot that's practically in the lap of a desolate casino. Outside, white appliances of curvy mid-20th-century design sit and wait for resurrection, ovens gaping open like gasping mouths.
This is Hugh's Place, where old stoves come to be reborn. "O'Keefe & Merritt" and "Chambers" are the magic words.

Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Hugh's Place has rescued vintage stoves from the ruins of flooded and damaged homes in the New Orleans and St. Charles areas. Owner Hugh Marrioneaux has two years' worth of work, but it's not a problem, he said, because many of the stoves are going into homes that are being rebuilt, giving him time to finish.

"We've been going down to New Orleans and picking them up and bringing them back here and decontaminating them," Marrioneaux said. "We store them in good, dry warehouses. As (owners) need them, as their homes are repaired and are ready for them, we tell them to give us a month's notice. Then we can deliver and set them up."

Hugh's Place workers have picked up between 30 and 40 stoves from Slidell, Madisonville, Mandeville and elsewhere in the New Orleans area, he said.

Anita Sarrat of Metairie said her Chambers stove is her most prized possession, "next to my dog and my husband. I'm not a big money spender, but that thing I had to have" after she saw one on a television cooking program not long ago.

Since Marrioneaux had restored Sarrat's stove recently, it didn't need that much work after about a foot of water got into her house in Katrina's wake, Sarrat said. She has it back now at her home, where she is awaiting kitchen cabinets and countertops.

"For some reason, it just cooks so well," Sarrat said. Simple things like chicken have a way of turning out especially well, she said. "I love it, I absolutely love it, and it's from the 1940s. They made these things to last."

Inside Hugh's Place, one corner is devoted to sales of dainty china and linens that Hugh's wife, Ann, brings back from her native Scotland to sell. There is also a fair amount of bric-a-brac, clawfeet for antique bathtubs and other clutter. But most of the place is taken up with behemoth stoves that resemble 1950s Buicks, most from the same chrome-crazy era.

"The mid-century ones are coming out of New Orleans," Marrioneaux said. "Chambers and O'Keefe & Merritt are No. 1 and 2, the ones people really loved. People want to save them. They care so much about them because they're like heirlooms, handed down from family to family, that kind of thing."

And, as anyone who has tried to get an heirloom repaired knows: Restoration is not cheap.

Though solid, the stoves are often mechanically worn out. Complete restoration of a white Chambers stove costs $2,850, plus delivery and the cost of any grates or burners or other parts that have to be replaced. Marrioneaux installs safety devices, which he developed, on the gas valves. Stoves in colors other than white cost more to fix, $3,250. The stoves are stripped down to the frames and pressure washed. Pieces that need new porcelain are sent to Independence, Mo. New chrome is applied locally.

A mechanical restoration -- cleaning, reinsulation, electrical repair, repolishing and detailing -- is $2,050, and the finished stove looks "real presentable," Marrioneaux said. "We won't let them go out of the door if it doesn't look good."

The stoves of the era featured all kinds of innovations for their time, such as salt and pepper shakers in built-in holders. Stove-top griddles and wells were relatively common. The wells are recessed pits designed to hold a pot down inside, a built-in predecessor to the Crock Pot, designed for cooking all day at low temperatures. Hugh's Place even has a set of three containers that fit together into the well, to cook a complete meal while the cook was away.

Marrioneaux and his three full-time employees (and one part-timer) have stoves coming and going from all parts of the country, not just south Louisiana. One Magic Chef stove on the floor came from New Jersey and is being shipped to Los Angeles. A Crown model just arrived from west Texas.

One New Orleans customer flew Marrioneaux to the East Coast to work on her father's stove when she couldn't find anyone else in the area to do the job.

Technicians from the Food Network have ordered parts for the yellow Chambers prominently displayed in the background of the set of Rachael Ray's TV show, "30-Minute Meals."

A long, low Chambers Imperial -- rare, with six burners, two wells and two ovens -- has been waiting here three years to go into a doctor's home. Across from it sits an apartment-size three-burner German stove. It arrived here in pieces in a box. "Propan," it says on the front. "Seppelfricke" is printed under the oven control knob.

Marrioneaux said most of his business comes through word of mouth and his Web site, www.hughsplace.com. He advertises in publications of the Old Appliance Club, based in Ventura, Calif. The Hugh's Place Web site and promotional flyswatters say "since 1947," because his family built this house and he lived here when he was a little kid. Sixteen years ago, he opened the shop to sell stuff.

"I was doing everything, (selling) just work clothes, toys, like a garage sale, more or less," Marrioneaux said. "One day, this gentleman came in and asked me if I could fix his mother's stove.

"He brought his mom's stove (a Tappan) and I fixed it and I liked it," he said. "I thought, 'This is fun.' I started building, more or less, the cheap stoves for house trailers.

"Then I had another customer come in from St. Francisville, and he wanted a Chambers stove. I found a Chambers and did it for him, and that was the beginning of my antique stove works. I really liked to do it and fell in love with it. And I found out there was a lot more money to be made in the heirloom stoves than in the cheap house trailer stoves, and there was a demand for them and the parts."

That was about 1990 or 1991. Marrioneaux started collecting old stoves and today has seven warehouses, a house and a barn stuffed with 150 or so Chambers stoves, plus O'Keefe & Merritts, Magic Chefs, Universals, Wedgewoods and Tappans, "mostly heirloom stoves," he said. "I have a lot of junkers but I can take three and build one perfect one. I find them on the side of the road, or people call me or give them to me, or I'll buy them, whatever works."

A restored white Chambers or O'Keefe & Merritt is $3,850; those in colors are $4,450. The Chambers stoves come with a copy of the original service manual, as well as the original cookbook, which is valuable to the owner because the Chambers ovens were designed to cook with the gas turned off. (Thus, they are inexpensive to operate.)

After the oven is preheated, the food is put in. When it is turned off, two baffles close and seal the oven, Marrioneaux explained. The stove's three inches of rock wool lining will maintain 350 degrees for three or four hours.

So what do the Marrioneauxes use to cook at home?

"To be honest with you, I've got an electric cooktop surrounded in brick, and a brick chimney with two ovens in it. It's all electric. We did that back in the 1970s," Marrioneaux said.

"To bring in one of my heirloom stoves I'd have to bring the jackhammers in, and do a $40,000 to $50,000 renovation in the kitchen area.

"But I do cook on the Chambers and O'Keefes here in the shop occasionally. We do hook them up and cook a good meal and make sure they're doing right."

Usually, they cook traditional Cajun dishes, such as rabbit spaghetti, etouffee or chicken stew. Sometimes they have fish fries, Marrioneaux said.

"And we'll bake in the oven, get a pie or some cornbread. A Chambers does beautiful cornbread."

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Making contact with Hugh's Place: 6732 U.S. 190, W. Port Allen; call (877) 463-9515 or visit Web site www.hughsplace.com.

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Food editor Judy Walker can be reached at (504) 826-3485 or [email protected].

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ September 14, 2006 02:26 PM: Message edited by: debgro ]</font>