Round Oak Gold Stove Returns

The famous Round Oak ‘Gold Stove’ has returned to Dowagiac after a 77 year absence. I consider the Gold Stove to be the ‘Holy Grail’ of Dowagiac artifacts– a legendary piece whose location was unknown for decades. Now it is back home!

As the Round Oak Stove Company prepared its booth for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, it created a one-of-a-kind stove plated in German Silver and Gold to attract fair attendees to its booth in the Manufacturing Building. It was wildly popular at the fair and Round Oak sent it to tour Europe before returning it to Dowagiac. Round Oak used it at fairs and conventions over the next fifty years and it eventually was shown in all 48 contiguous states in the Union.

When Round Oak liquidated in 1947, it sold the Round Oak name to Peerless Furnace Company of Indianapolis, led by Frank Mutz I and other Mutz family members. The sale included the Gold Stove, which the family proudly took to fairs and conventions. After Peerless closed in 1965, the Mutz family kept the Gold Stove and displayed it privately for the next 60 years.

In October 2024, I took a phone call from Frank Mutz II claiming he had the Gold Stove in Atlanta, Georgia. After phone conversations, emails and shared photographs, we confirmed the he did indeed have the famous and long-lost Round Oak Gold Stove! We stayed in touch for the next year until Frank emailed me on Halloween to let me know he wanted to donate it to the museum.

Last week, longtime Round Oak collector and museum board member Bill Krohne and I drove to the Atlanta area to pick up the stove and bring it back home for the first time since it was shown in a Dowagiac storefront during the Dowagiac Centennial Celebration in 1948!

Huge thanks to Frank Mutz II and his family for taking care of the stove for almost 80 years and then donating it to the museum. This is truly a fantastic gift for the community!

Thanks to Bill Krohne for taking a ride to Atlanta for the pickup and to Don and Joan Lyons for underwriting our trip. Thanks also to the City of Dowagiac and our amazing supporters for making the museum a viable institution worthy of such a donation!

Give us a few weeks to catalogue the stove and get a display cabinet made. I hope we can get it on display for the community by mid-December.