Description:
Charles Postley, located at 260-262 Water Street in New York City’s Lower East Side, was a cooper who became a stove inventor, maker, and dealer during the War of 1812. By 1825, New York City’s population grew to about 150-160,000 people, and had acquired numerous specialized stove and grate makers and sellers. It also developed a stronger heavy-industrial base, on which it would build in the late 1830s to become a significant center for manufacturing stoves in its own right rather than just assembling, distributing, and selling, as well as inventing and designing, stoves that were actually made (i.e. cast) elsewhere, at the traditional furnace sites. Charles Postley stayed in the stove trade for about thirty years, making a large enough success by the early 1830s that he even bought his own Pennsylvania blast furnace to supply the castings he needed before going bankrupt in the 1840s. Your stove is a Charles Postley "Lafayette Franklin Stove," first advertised in 1826, claiming that the stove “possesses new principles to regulate the draught with that of the chimney – found to be superior to any in the market.” Postley's version of a Franklin Stove was evidently intended to mimic a traditional mantel and fireplace and fit into an old hearth and is designed in a Late Classical or Empire style with bold acanthus leaf-wrapped columns. Postley’s Franklin stove was patented, but as of yet no patent file records for this innovation have been located. There was a patent office fire in 1836, and many early patents are missing unless the owner re-applied for their patent. Franklin stove, cast iron stove,
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