Coolest Vintage Fan Install Location

[Deleted]

What, in recent memory, is the coolest install location you've seen, and what fans did it have?

What I mean to say is, a property, most likely commercial, that has/had a variety of vintage fans in cool installations, with almost no new/crap fans.

My example:

There was a strip mall on 94 somewhere between Madison and Milwaukee. I only discovered it because I stopped off to get something to eat on the way to the airport. On one end was a Ben Franklin store with dozens of Nutone Slimlines. On the other end was an Ace Hardware with 6-8 56" Dayton Laskos. In between was a men's clothing store with 4 brown/brass Nutone Verandah Deluxes with stencil blades. Next to the men's store was a liquor store with 2 brown Crompton Greaves. There was also a Subway with SMC U42's. I found it again a year or so ago, the men's store was gone, the Subway had Regencies, and some of the Dayton Laskos had been removed. The rest of the fans were still there.

It's getting harder to find locations with a variety of vintage fans and no crap fans.

[JW]

As I've said before, Schlitterbahn used to have several cool ones, with the most awesome being the white/(antique?) brass Originals with pecan cane blades and swirl globes on vaulted ceilings directly under skylights. Of course we all know now they've been replaced with those crappy 36" Hampton Bays.

The Strand in Galveston is always good for Originals, but there are always a few less every time I go. There is one store in particular that has a black ceiling with at least nine tightly packed black Quick Connects... obviously not vintage, but the setting works and it's cool nonetheless. If they were black and oak Originals, it would be one of the coolest setups anywhere, hands down.

[Jean Lemieux]

One of the coolest one very local to me was the chiro my mother goes to that I mentioned here a few years ago. I got my two first 4 Seasons from this place. The place is actually located in what used to be a house so physically it looks residential. In this small house there was seven ceiling fans all or almost all vintage and cool ones. That's a lot of ceiling fans for such a small house. The waiting room had my 4 Seasons top mount 120 cm antique brass. The secretary's office had an antique brass 132 cm five cane blades GE vent with a triple light kit. The shades were always missing. For a long time I was pretty confused about what fan it was. At first I thought it looked like a Moss Heirloom Deluxe, after I thought it was an Fandango Alaska. Now I realized that it was one of the rare 4 Seasons Victorian that have a few Alaska characteristics such as the pretzel brackets and Alaska pull chains. It had teak and tight wave cane blades. In the last years, the cane was missing on one of the blades. Two small rooms had each a 4 Seasons Seville 90 cm with their originals controllers. One was brown with walnut and stencil blades and the other one was supposed to be like this too except that it was painted pink with white painted blades. I got this second one. One of the treatments room which was pretty small had a brown & PB 4 Seasons Classic 140 cm with four ivory plain blades and a large brass nut at the bottom. It also had it's controller. It was way too big and powerful for the room it was in. I wanted this one a lot. The two last fans were some white late 1980's, early 1990's spinners 90 cm with four oval end blades. One had a mushroom light kit, the other one no light kit.

Most of the fans were removed in 2005 except for the two white spinners that were removed in 2007.

[Deleted]

There was a flea market I used to go to in GA with TONS of barns/rooms, each one had a row of several dozen fans, in the center/peak of the ceiling, almost blade to blade. Some rooms had the OLD Gold Lines (bell canopy). Some had Moss Tropical Breezes (56" 3 curved blades). Some had old Dayton/Marleys. Some had SMC industrials. Some had had Encon Monarchs. I went again a few years ago and EVERYTHING was replaced with Hampton Bay industrials.

[Tais]

hmm... as in recent memory,


Holy Prophet Mosque, Al Madina.. one place is filled with vintage pakistani ceiling fans (national) and vintage KDK wall fans.. not one fan is replaced with a new one for a very long time



Holy Mosque, Mecca, this place is the building with the highest amount of ceiling fans and wall fans i have ever been to, with roughly 5000 ceiling fans currently placed, what is even more amazing is almost all the fans are operating.. many fans are vintage, except for one section which has the current xpelair whispair

ceiling fans i spotted there so far: (mostly vintage, some were new but not crap quality

the main area: 3 pakistani branded fans that look alike, all are vintage (70s - 80s)
MTM
National
Lahore

extension 1:
Xpelair Whispair (late 80s)
a clone of 80s xpelair whispair

Sa'ee Area:
roughly 1000 Xpelair Whispair (current one)
TMT (2000s)
KDK M56RG
Big Ass fan (only 1)

Basement (excluding the ones mentioned above)
National F560Z1
KDK T48ZK
KDK T56ZK
KDK B56XK
Panasonic F48MZ2
Panasonic F56MZ2

there are probably more brands in that place which i didnt discover yet

[Jared H.]

Natural Bridge Caverns has a lone FS and bunches of originals, some on long downrods on Cathedral wood ceilings

[jonasclark]

Where I live (and grew up) ceiling fans never were very popular. We don't get a lot of heat here. But the coolest installs I've ever seen involving vintage fans, neither of which were in Washington, are:

Organ Stop Pizza, Mesa, Arizona: I first saw this, the last remaining of the Organ Stop chain of three restaurants, in the early 1990s. They had eleven Casablanca belt-drives installed, with belting run via line-shafts, rather than fan-to-fan as Fanimation usually does it now. Eventually, Organ Stop moved to a new building, bringing in what by that time was the 2nd-largest Wurlitzer organ ever put together &8 ranks) and they reinstalled the fans in the new building. They're in three rows down the room in grid formation, with the 12th (empty) spot front-and-center. They're AB with hub-mount 52" plain wood blades, and they have 5-light kits with four loop arms, keyed sockets & uno fitters and a center light. They have about a foot or so of shaft between the bottom of the scrollwork and the hub. The two line-shafts run between the three rows of fans. They're always kept running.

Kona Inn, Kona (Big Island), Hawai'i: Another Casablanca belt-fan set. These have weathered from AB to a verdegris finish, and have had the blades replaced with 36" blond woodgrain-plastic ABS blades. The restaurant is open to the air all along the front, so they get lots of salt exposure! They have four-short-arm fitters. These are an unusual design, ornate but with different scrolls than the common short Fanimation ones (and also unlike, and shorter than, a New Orleans Centennial short-scroll) and this scrollwork has no room to enclose the pulleys, which are mounted below. The layout here is the stand-out, as follows. The motor is in a back room with a cut-out in the wall for the belt. Belts go fan-to-fan. Past the motor there are three fans, then an idler (scroll & pulleys with nothing below) and then the square group: four fans in a square with one loop of belt run around all four, very cool. Two of the fans in the square have three pulleys: one accepts the line from the idler on the motor side, and sends another belt out to a fan up front. The other also runs a fan up front, and then sends a belt off the other way mirroring the line from the motor: idler, fan, fan.

Also worth seeing is Hilo Airport, on the other side of the island, which has two VERY early copper Casa hub-mount Victorians with a flat, decorated disk below the hub. These are in the snack bar, and were not running. I asked, but nobody remembered seeing them in use and the snack bar employee tried some wall switches with no results.

[Deleted]

The lone Four Seasons makes this awesome! There was a car dealership converted into a church in Virginia that had a bunch of white Charlestons, and one PB 38" Four Seasons in the break room.

[Jean Lemieux]

There's a hardware store close to me that used to have six cool fans. All the fans were different. They were all installed in the main part of the store where the ceiling is exposed and much higher except for one. In the main part was a white 1990's-2000's Canarm CP56, a white early 1980's Canarm second generation 140 cm like I have, and a white 120 cm version of it with the chrome nut at the bottom. The mid size version are extremely rare to see. The two other fans were what I believe to be some Golden Fans. They could have been Moss or Enredco too. One was white, 140 cm with three straight metal blades and a brass nut, the other one was brown & PB with four wooden cane blades. The blades must have been square tipped.

The last fan was in a different part of the store where the ceiling was much lower. It's a 1989ish SMC Laguna 90 cm, white with four stencil blades and no light kit exactly like the one I have. It was installed in a small room that was all made a plywood. I guess they used to use that room to cut wood.

Another interesting thing to note about this store is that when I went there in 2006 and saw all the fans described above, on the shelves they still had some old 1990's NIB Canarm Contempara 107 cm for sale! From what I remember it was the green box from around 1996.

The white Golden Fan looked exactly like the second one in this link but 140 cm.
www.vintageceilingfans.com/mosstropicalbreezetf-348industrialceilingfans.html

In 2008 the place was bought by Rona and renovated. It used to be owned by Pro. As recently as last week, I passed in front of it and the Rona banner was gone. It said it was still open but apparently Rona does not own it anymore. Very weird.