Posted 8 years ago
Linz21rz
(1 item)
We found this Orbon stove in the basement of a house we bought. It is currently hooked up to a gas line and works. Probably used for canning. Does anyone know anything about it? A year or anything else would be helpful. The house we bought was built in the 60's. Thanks
You can ask the Belleville Labor & Industry Museum.
http://labortribune.com/belleville-labor-industry-museum-tells-the-story-of-americans-at-work/
"Museum tells a story of stoves
Belleville – In Belleville’s manufacturing heyday between the 1870s and 1940s, no business was bigger than its stove-making industry.
The nation’s growing residential sector needed ways to generate some heat, and centrally located Belleville became the place that provided the products.
Many of the stoves were plain kitchen stoves that would burn wood or gas to cook dinner and warm up the room. The stoves became more sophisticated, providing burners and ovens.
Such stoves are much in evidence at the Belleville Labor and Industry Museum, some plain as an old hat and some in gorgeous colors and metal finishes. About two dozen are on display.
Belleville Stove and Range and Empire Stove led the business, but many other foundries joined in, and enamel makers supplied their outer finishes.
The museum also features specialty items such as stoves designed for laundry rooms that heated up large water containers in the days before home water heaters, and fancy stoves designed for heating gracious parlors.
One of the stoves was truly ahead of its time – the “Coin-A-Cook” that combined a gas stove with coin operation for use in public places such as parks. It was supposed to provide cooking for half an hour each time coins were inserted, but thieves kept breaking into the stoves and stealing the money, sometimes leaving gas pipes open and exposed.
Museum volunteer Don Schneder knows the Belleville stoves are still widespread around America because of the number of inquiries the museum gets from people seeking more information about their own stoves.
Logically enough, he said, the inquiries tend to come from Alaskans."
The museum website:
http://www.laborandindustrymuseum.org/welcome.shtml
I'm looking for the cast iron grates over the burners. I have that exact same range and one of them is broken