Odin means the God of Fire in Norse Mythology
Founded in 1897, by Carl H. Hoffstetter, the Odin Stove Manufacturing Company begun in a small wooden-frame building on the South side of West 12th Street in Erie. Initially the company manufactured only gas hot plates. Hoffstetter’s brother, Robert, and their father, John, joined the company and the business grew as the company expanded their products to include: gas heaters, furnace burners, soldering furnaces, oil heaters and domestic cooking ranges.
The success of the Odin Beautyrange in the late 1930s became the company’s signature accomplishment, making it a household name. The company made cooking ranges for many years before the successful Beautyrange, but its success created such a demand for the stove that the company, in order to meet the demand, expanded its plant to cover the entire block of West 12th and Myrtle Streets. Keeping up with demand the company also opened a modern foundry on the site of the former Erie Engine Company at West 13th and Walnut Streets.
The prices for the Beautyrange ranged from the standard model $94.50, to $104.50 for the deluxe model. The stove was manufactured and assembled in Erie, the assembly line producing 300 stoves a day, employing 500 people throughout the 1930s and 40s.
In the 1950s, the company didn’t want to rely on the Beautyrange for its continue success and begun to heavily involve itself in the research and development of bottle gas, working closely with the Propane Corporation of Erie, which lead the development. It’s not known what the Odin company was attempting to develop, but its assumed that it was an innovation that would equal the success of the Beautyrange, which the sales of were flat at the time.
In July of 1953, the cost of development placed the Odin company heavily in debt and it was sold to the Dearborn Stove Company of Dallas, Texas who was looking to capitalize on the popularity of Beautyrange, but less than three years later it was sold again to Republic Heater of California, who wanted the Odin plant to expand their water heater business, thus ended the manufacturing of stoves, the last one coming off of the assembly line in 1956 — the Odin Stove Manufacturing Company no longer existed. The newly merged Republic-Odin Appliance Corporation manufactured water heaters at the plant until the spring of 1972, when they closed the plant before going out of business that same year on the 29th of June. After 1972, the plant sat vacant for many years until 1987, when it was demolished.
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| The stove shown here is a Beautyrange De Luxa. |