General Elactric Refrigerator - Townsend, MT - Household Appliances and Presses on Waymarking.com

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General Elactric Refrigerator - Townsend, MT

in Household Appliances and Presses

Posted by:  T0SHEA

12T E 460297 N 5129948

Established in a brand new, purpose built edifice, the Broadwater County Museum was officially dedicated on July 4, 1976.

Owned and operated by the Broadwater County Historical Society, which held its first meeting on August 21, 1970, the society worked for two years toward opening the Broadwater County Museum. Construction began in April 1974 and, though not yet open to the public, the society held its first annual meeting to take place in the completed building a year later. Continuing to expand thereafter, work on a new addition to the museum was completed in 2000. Featured within the new addition are a "half-scale model of a dugout canoe of the type Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery built on their voyage along the upper Missouri. Also featured are an authentic sheep herders wagon, a horse drawn carriage and a buffalo skin."

The Museum features an extensive historical library, The Eleanor Marks Library. Included in the library are copies of most of the local newspapers, dating back to the 1800s. The library also has extensive records of obituaries of local residents and the location of their burial, as well as links to comprehensive information on the cemeteries and burial sites in Broadwater County.

Within the museum are a wealth of artefacts relating to the story of the people of Broadwater County, including domestic life, business life, agricultural life and cultural life. Of interest to many who visit the Museum are the Family History files, which contain histories of many local families, both past and present.

In the Homemaking section of the museum is a quite complete collection of utensils, containers and appliances which would have been found in the well appointed kitchen of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, including this 1920s refrigerator.

The big news in the kitchen during the 1920s? Reliable, affordable electric refrigeration. As more homes had access to electric power, people replaced their messy wooden iceboxes with stylish, low maintenance, enameled porcelain electric refrigerators. There was a 1922 model that consisted of a wooden cold box, water-cooled compressor, an ice cube tray and a 0.25-cubic-metre (9 cu ft) compartment, and cost $714. By way of comparison, at the time a 1922 Model-T Ford cost about $476.

In 1930, 10% of households had them -- by 1940, 56% did. General Electric's distinctive "Monitor Top" refrigerator was a big seller in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The first refrigerator to see widespread use was the General Electric "Monitor-Top" refrigerator introduced in 1927, so-called, by the public, because of its resemblance to the gun turret on the ironclad warship USS Monitor of the 1860s. The compressor assembly, which emitted a great deal of heat, was placed above the cabinet, and enclosed by a decorative ring.

This General Electric refrigerator, lacking the above mentioned decorative ring, may be an early 1920s, pre Monitor Top unit. On the other hand, it may just be lacking the decorative ring, making it a true Monitor Top fridge.