Kalamazoo Ranges from 1931

I kind of think of this last Christmas as a "Cookstove Christmas" in that most of the gifts that I received had to do with woodburning cookstoves. One such gift came from my sister.  In our kitchen, we have a framed magazine ad from the September 1931 issue of The Country Gentleman. The ad is telling people that they should order a copy of the Kalamazoo Stove Company's catalog.  It has been hanging there for perhaps three or four years, and I have often looked at it and wished that I could fill out the little mail-in card in the lower right corner and request a copy of the catalog.

A photo of the framed advertisement hanging on
our kitchen wall.  Sorry about the reflection of the
camera flash.

Well, I requested a copy of the catalog all right, but my request went through eBay.  You can't imagine how excited I was to find the very catalog that was shown in this advertisement come up for auction online! 

The catalog is comprised of about sixty pages of attractive color illustrations and really is very impressive for its age.  

In 1931, the Kalamazoo Stove Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was manufacturing not only ranges, but also heating stoves, furnaces, duct work, and washing machines.  They were in operation from 1900 to 1952, and some of the stoves that they made are still in daily use today.  You frequently see them for sale on eBay and Craigslist.  Kalamazoo stoves were popular because they were pretty affordable since the company didn't use a middleman to sell their products.  The company's slogan was "A Kalamazoo - Direct to You."

My personal opinion is that their stoves also seem to be of a little lesser quality than other brands.  Thus, when you see them for sale today, you also tend to see them in a little worse shape than their contemporaries.  

Since this blog is intended to be about all things wood cookstove related, I've scanned all the pages which had to do with their ranges and included them in this post.  I hope this can serve as a resource for anyone who has, or is interested in, this line of stoves.  I've never done a post quite like this, so let me know what you think. 

The front cover of the catalog.  You can see
"Sept. 1931" handwritten at the top left in pencil.

The following are all of the pages that had anything to do with cookstoves and are shown here in the order that they appeared in the catalog.  You may be able to read quite a bit of the text if you click on the pictures to view them in a little larger format.

The parts page appears early in the catalog.

The most common advertising point I've seen
for ALL wood cookstove manufacturers was
what wonderful bakers their particular brand
of stove was.  Obviously, this was of great
concern to the consumer, but I wonder which
brand truly was the best baker.

The only small "cookstove" in the catalog is
the one at the lower left of the above page.
The rest of them are all "ranges."

You can tell that by 1931, the Great Depression
was in effect because the prices on these ranges
had fallen from the previous years--in some cases
by quite a bit.

I wish I could have scanned the next two pages in a single large image because they are the "centerfold" of the catalog and introduce The President, which was their flagship range that year.

After the above page, the catalog transitioned into Kalamazoo's heating stoves and then their line of furnaces and ductwork, finishing with their two models of washing machines on the last page.

The catalog's back cover.

Beautiful pictures, aren't they?

I have other vintage cookstove materials like this in my vast collections. Are posts like this valuable to my readers?  I welcome your feedback.