Lovely GE Monitor Top refrigerator

The refrigerator sat by the door, just inside the auction house. It seemed to be as pearly white as the day it was bought for $176.40 from Philadelphia Electric Co. On top was a round white compressor that looked like a hat box.

In a 1930 magazine ad, Generel Electric had actually described the top piece as “scarely bigger than a hatbox” in a promotional move, no doubt, to appeal to women. It was nothing like the refrigerators we’re used to seeing today. It had four curved feet and aluminum ice trays like the ones I remember in our icebox (that’s what we were still calling our electric refrigerator when I was growing up).

Someone had taped the original receipt on the door. It had two dates plus information about both sale and rental, so it was a bit confusing. The receipt was from the Philadelphia Electric Co. with a delivery date of 9/30/35. The date of the receipt was 10/11/35. The terms were listed as $4.90 rental for 36 months, yet there was also an amount listed as $176.40. In fine writing at the bottom of the receipt was “Present this bill when making payments. Use reverse side to record payments.”

I assumed that the refrigerator was sold to the person whose name and address were on the receipt, but that it could also be rented.

I loved this vintage refrigerator as soon as I saw it. It was stylish in its oldness, impressive, and very clean. It did not have that stale hot smell of a refrigerator left sitting around for a long time with its door closed. On the catalog sheet, the auction house noted that it had a few areas of paint loss – which I didn’t see – but that it still worked.

The refrigerator was a Monitor Top, and it was said to be one of GE’s most successful products. It was first sold in 1925 for $525 or 1927 for $300, depending on what you read. According to the 2002 book “The 1930s” by William H. Young and Nancy K. Young, GE had sold 50,000 of the refrigerators by 1929 and continued at that clip right through the Depression. Sales had reached 1 million in 1931. By then, the company had dropped the price to $290, according to the book.

The 1930 magazine ad describing the compressor as a hatbox had the appliance selling for $205.

The Monitor Top was toppled from its perch by the Sears Coldspot Super Six designed by Raymond Loewy in 1935. The Coldspot, according to the 1930s book, is considered a design classic. Other refrigerator makers like Kelvinator and Frigidaire were also getting into the competitive fray and selling their own products. By the late 1930s, refrigerators were starting to lose their four feet and made flat to the floor, as in this Westinghouse ad.

One website noted that utility companies sold the Monitor Top to customers in monthly installments added to their bills. A 1935 GE ad offered a dozen models, including the Monitor Top and Flat Top (with the compressor underneath), for as low as $77.50.

The new Monitor Top had its drawbacks, according to the 1930s book. The freezer and meat tray weren’t big enough, but the ice trays were more efficient that chipping ice – the way it had to be done with its predecessor, the ice box. Wooden ice boxes with hollow sides and tin or zinc linings kept their cool with blocks of ice delivered by the ice man in his wagon. Inside was a drip pan, holding tank or other device for collecting water.

At an event recently, a woman told me about a refrigerator her mother still owned. As soon as she mentioned it, I thought about the Monitor Top I had seen at auction. No, she corrected me. This one actually needed ice to cool the insides. It was an old icebox. I’d love to see one in person, but I did find several examples on the web.

I wasn’t around when the Monitor Top sold at auction, but I learned later that it went for $250 – not much more than it sold for in 1935.