From Ace & Acme to Yorktown & Youngstown: 79 brands of metal kitchen cabinets made after World War II

The product that started it all — the blog, that is: Vintage steel kitchen cabinets. I wanted to renovate my kitchen. I wanted vintage steel kitchen cabinets. I went on a five-year quest to find them. Along the way I also obsessively researched how to put a 1950s-1960s kitchen together. When I was all done, it turned out so well that I started the blog to share what I had learned. In my kitchen-quest, I already had identified many brands of steel kitchen cabinets made back in the day. And in the years since — very often with the help of readers — we have identified a total of 79 different brands of metal kitchen cabinets built before, during but most after World War II. 78 brands of steel, one brand of aluminum; 75 brands in the U.S., four brands in the U.K.

Over the weekend, I pulled the complete list together into this annotated list. One of my next big projects for the year will be making stand-alone pages on each brand. I have scores of catalogs, will organize them, scan them, and post them. Plus, I will see what I’m missing and search to fill those gaps. In addition, scroll on down — I’ve created an uploader, I’d love to see your vintage steel kitchen cabinets, too — I can add them to the specific pages on each brand to come.

79 brands of metal kitchen cabinets — pretty amazing, huh!

1. Ace
2. Acme Metal Products Corp.
3. Admiral
4. Alden
5. American
6. American-Standard
7. American Central Division
8. Ampco
9. Anemone Kitchen Furnishings
10. Art Metal Cabinets
11. Beautycraft Custom
12. Beauty Queen
13. Berger
14. Briggs Beautyware
15. Capitol
16. Columbia
17. Cox
18.  Crane
19. Crosley
20. Dieterich Steel Cabinet Corp.
21. Dupont-Dulux
22. Elgin
23.  English Rose
24.  Frigidaire
25. GE
26. Geneva
27. Gennesee
28. Hotpoint
29. Harrison Steel Cabinet Co.
30. Hobart
31. Hoffman
32. Homart
33. J&L Steel
34.  Jamestown
35. John Lewis of Hungerford
36. Jubilee
37. KBC
38. Kitchen Kraft Steel Kitchens
39. King
40. Kitchen Queen
41. Kelvinator
42. Kohler
43. Lyon
44. Leisure Made
45. Marvel
46. Morton
47. Midwest Mfg. Company
48. Morgan Kitchen Cabinets
49. Murray
50. Miller Metal Proucts, Inc.
51. Morhand Kitchens
52. Montgomery Ward
53. Olympia Aluminum Kitchen Kabinets
54. Palace
55. Palley Manufacturing Co.
56. Paul
57. Peerless-Mayer
58. RCA-Whirlpool
59. Regency
60. Republic
61. Reynolds
62. Roberts & Mander Corp.
63. St. Charles
64. Servel, Inc.
65. Sears
66. Shirley
67. Signature
68. Stewart
69. Swanco
70. Thriftee
71. Tracy
72. Universal-Rundle
73. United Lifetime Kitchens
74. United Metal Cabinet Corp.
75. Westinghouse
76. Walters
77. Whitehead Monel
78. Yorktown
79. Youngstown

Read more:

• A short history of steel kitchen cabinets
• Our complete steel kitchen cabinet category
• BE SAFE / RENOVATE SAFE — get informed when using vintage products

Upload photos of your metal kitchen cabinets:

1. Be sure to tell us what brand of cabinets you have!!!
2. If you can figure it out, set your camera to no bigger than “medium” images, so files aren’t too large — large files really slow down the slide show. 
3. Uploader DOES work but message you get on screen *may be* funky and confusing. Upload ONCE and trust the image it there — I just need to “set new photos free” from my control panel and will be checking hourly to do so. 
4. Terms of Use apply — by uploading you agree to them.

Add your description (and your name, if you like) right here

Tips to view slide show: Click on first image… it will enlarge and you can also read my captions… move forward or back via arrows below the photo… you can start or stop at any image:
[See image gallery at retrorenovation.com]

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