Vintage Revco Bilt-In refrigerators and freezes are the “holy grail” of refrigerators from the 1950s and 1960s, more even than the vintage GEs constructed like wall cabinets and even more than the Kelvinator Foodarama. Is this correct, you readers who are stalking them and so much more knowledgeable than me… who can name vintage fridges and their model years like car guys name cars? Here for your retro research pleasure is are 17 pages of a Revco catalog from 1958, which I scooped up know that we had some Revco fans out there. Here for your retro research pleasure is are 17 pages of a Revco catalog from 1958, which I scooped up know that we had some Revco fans out there.
Revco was based in Deerfield, Michigan. According to the brochure, in 1956 seems to have introduced custom colors as well as Stainless Steel and Antique Copper.
In addition to featuring great photos, these brochures always give us hints about the design ideas and trends — and of course, what the marketers were simply trying to sell us on — that were driving design changes and innovations in the home. For example, in this fabulous California kitchen, “built by Fred C. Von Guenther of Orina, Calif.” the text says:
California, the land of outdoor living, offers a fresh not in kitchen planning. Lost forever is the old-fashioned kitchen with its stark white appliances, separated from the rest of the house by barriers of walls and doors. In contrast — here under a spacious beam ceiling the copper-hooded open barbecue pit serves as a transitional wall between the open kitchen and the living room area of the house. The trend-setting interior textures, exterior brick, clay tile, the exposed wood beams, with all appliances recessed into the walls, provide a living room feeling to every area in this charming home.
Indeed, this opening of the kitchen into the main house… treating the kitchen like an extension of the living space and decorating it thus… was a key shift hot under way by 1956. As I’ve discussed before, this was likely one of the death knells of steel kitchen cabinets — over time, we wanted our kitchen cabinets and to look like “furniture.”
Tips to use slide show — click on any thumbnail and it should open large (up to 600 pixels wide) on your screen. Use arrows below image to move forward or back. You may start or stop on any image. If you are having trouble getting image to enlarge…hmmm, make sure your Java is updated?
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Hey, also be sure to see this vintage kitchen — with orange-laminate covered Revcos spotted in the wild here. Yum.