The

Model 700
Model 475
and
Model 541

 

HERE’S A 137.COM “Featurette” about three lovely old Hoovers in my collection — a 1935 Model 475, a 1927 Model 700 that was rebuilt at an unknown point in time but most likely before 1940, and a 1921 Model 541 with some unusual details.

There is no particular reason for the pairing together of these three machines, other than the fact that they are just two old Hoovers. They are all in beautiful condition and I believe the 700 Special is a bit rare and maybe one that not too many people have ever seen.

The Model 475

I found this Hoover in a most amazing place.

One day I was looking at 'for-sale' ads in the Recycler, a local buy-and-sell newspaper in the Los Angeles area. This was back in the early 1990s, well before the Internet was what it is today. I saw an ad that really made me stop in my tracks:

“400 Vacuums, 400 Dollars” and then a phone number.

That's all it said. My interest highly piqued, I called the number. I found out that the ad had been placed by the son of a man who had had a Hoover dealership in the Glendale area for many years, and had retired and closed his shop about 25 years previously. When he closed his shop, he moved all his intentory to his house, storing it ... in his back yard!

The man had just recently died, and the son inherited the house. He wanted to renovate the house and grounds, and he wanted to get rid of all the vacuum cleaners. He finally was convinced when I told him that it would be unlikely to find any one person who would want them all, but I'd certainly be interested to see what he had and would take as many as I could.

I got directions to the house, which was in Eagle Rock, and made an appointment to come out there..

You just have to have seen the sight that greeted us when Stan Kann (whom I talked into coming along) and I walked into the enormous back yard of this man's home.

Envision a yard about the size of half a football field. In the yard were about a dozen huge mounds of STUFF covered with giant, heavy-duty blue vinyl tarps. The mounds varied in size but most were around 10-12 feet in diamater and from 8 to 10 feet high!!

Stan and I walked to the first pile and lifted the first tarp. Underneath was a sight that nearly defied description: A mountain of old vacuum cleaners, mostly upright Hoovers, none of them new. Most of them were old Hoovers from the 1930s through mid-1960s with a smattering of other machines as well.

We both gasped in shock and began digging through the pile. The cleaners' cords and handles were hopelessly entertwined with one another so pulling them apart was practically an exercise in futility. Finally, we decided the only way to do it would be to cut the cords some of the cords and pull the machines apart that way.

We spent two long days, from morning till night, laboriously digging through those dozen vacuum cleaner mountains.

Interestingly the vast majority of machines were uprights. There were no Filter Queens, Lewyts, etc., and no Hoover tanks or canisters. There were only a few old Electrolux XXXs that were in bad shape and not worth salvaging.

Stan was a bit disappointed that he really didn't find much of any interest to him, but I came home with quite a few treasures, some of which even Stan was amazed to see.

I found:

— A Kenmore Imperial, with the original bag, cord, handle grip and brush roll in incredible condition. When we came upon that Stan loudly declared, “Well, would you look at that! A Bug-Eye!” I had to “sssshhh” him a couple of times when we'd find something jaw-dropping ... I didn’t want the man to get any ideas about this stuff being a goldmine! (Most of it really was ruined.)

— An “America” straight-suction upright from around 1915.

— A Hoover Model 102 with the original cord and brush roll but lacking the bag.

— Several Hoovers ... Model 700, 725, 750, 825, 450, 28, etc., in varying states of completeness and condition.

— A Hoover Model 925 with (what I thought at the time was) the original bag, rubber handle grip, original Hoover plug, brush roll and in immaculate condition.

— A Hoover Model 475 also all original and in immaculate condition (the one featured here!).

— A Canadian Electrolux ZB88, the strange-looking maroon model that, to me, never having ever seen one before, looked like something from a parallel dimension!

— And quite a few other odds and ends of things, so many that I just can't recall them all. This included several boxes of upright brush rolls, including a number of the very early Hoover tufted-brush rolls for the pre 543 models.

Many of the machines, despite being out of doors, were in amazingly good condition. The man's son said that all that stuff had been out there the entire 25+ years since the store had been closed. The ones in the best condition were the ones in the middle areas of the piles. The ones nearest the top and bottom were rusted and corroded but the ones in-between were very well protected.

I hate to say how many hundreds and hundreds of machines we had to leave behind, that the man said he would have to send to the dump. (I was the only person who had responded to his ad.) There were just so many of them, and there were a lot of things that today I wish I could have gotten but did not because they did not interest me at the time — many, many, many Convertibles, Dial-A-Matics etc. that at the time I did not consider at all collectible. Not to mention that I had absolutely nowhere to put them, nor the money to pay for them! Even though he wanted only $15-20 apeice for them, that was starting to quickly add up and I had to be very frugal and picky in what I took.

But the work was worth it in terms of the treasures I did find and bring home, including this (as Bob Kautzman would say) beeee-yoooo-teeee-ful Model 475.

Almost impossible to believe, isn’t it, that this sweetie languished under a tarp in a man's back yard for 25 years! All I had to do when I got it was wipe it off and give it a good general cleaning-up.

The only non-original thing on it is the cord.

The photos really do not do these machines justice. They are very hard to photograph and even the tiniest flaws and marks are highlighted and exaggerated.

Beautiful original bag.

Even the bag retracting strap is intact and the spring strong and tight! These are very hard to find as they tended to break. I do NOT store the machine with the strap extended like this — I just wanted to take one photo of it for this web page since most people today, especially young collectors, may never get to see this. I store the bag with a piece of steel wire leading from the bag collar to the strap so that it remains coiled up inside the handle.

Instruction Manual

Want to see and hear the 475 in action —
as it BEATS as it SWEEPS as it CLEANS ?!
Click on the icons below!