The Quirky Old-School Refrigerators Named For A Civil War Gunship

If you're going to design something eccentric, it's got to have a name to match. When Hoover launched globular vacuum cleaners that floated on its own airstream, they called it the Constellation. Frigidaire's oven was so flamboyant it got named the Flair and found itself on the set of Bewitched! Then it should come as no surprise that this quirky refrigerator was named after a Civil War gunship because the cylindrical compressor mounted on top resembled the turret on the ironclad ship USS Monitor. The fridge in question is General Electric's Monitor Top.

The USS Monitor was the American Navy's first ironclad warship. The eye-catching, cylindrical turret sat on top of the ship. The steam-powered turret could spin all the way around, giving it a firing range of nearly 360 degrees. The Monitor Top fridge, designed by GE's chief engineer Christian Steenstrup, looked like an all-rounder in its own right. A mix of modern and Victorian design elements gave the fridge a look similar to a metal safe wearing a helmet walking around on antique legs.

When mechanical home refrigerators first hit the market in the 1910s, they were priced quite exorbitantly. At around $1,000 a fridge, there weren't too many households who could afford to buy one. In 1927, GE launched the Monitor Top at half that price, and within a few years they were retailing around $200. This was a fridge and a pricepoint designed to blow the competition out of the water. Even today, it's the perfect accessory if you're designing the retro kitchen of your dreams.

The USS Monitor only fought in one battle against the CSS Virginia, a Confederate iron clad, which ended in a draw. Shortly thereafter, the USS Monitor sank in a storm in December, 1862. In 2002, the turret was raised and displayed at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Virginia. The turret on the Monitor Top refrigerator, meanwhile, went quietly out of fashion. As designers hid the compressor unit within the unit, refrigerators started looking more like the modern rectangular boxes we see today. The Monitor Top did have its little moment in the spotlight though; sharp-eyed observers online noted that Rocky Balboa had one in his apartment in "Rocky." 

Like many vintage items that are trendy again, the Monitor Top fridge seems to be poking its turret out of the water. One Redditor posted an image of a Monitor Top in perfect working condition. "Keeps a steady 35 degrees in the cabinet, makes a gentle whirring sound when running as it has no fans, and has a semi-automatic defrost cycle, which I have to do about every 8-9 months," they wrote. 

Other posters warned that these refrigerators used either sulfur dioxide, which could cause loss of vision and skin issues, or methyl formate, which was highly inflammable and toxic. Largely though, there was love. "Beautiful machine," one poster said. "I have always loved these old fridges and am excited to get the one we found rewired and cleaned up."