The very last Keystone designed dollhouse

 

This dollhouse was produced by The South Bend Toy Company during the early 1970s, dating by the interior modern wallpaper designs and colors. It is almost an exact copy of the last dollhouse Keystone Wood Toys made in 1955. 

           

Plastic insert windows are on one side of the house with graphic windows on the opposite side.

This ad appeared in Keystone Wood Toys 1955 catalog. Keystone Manufacturing Co of Boston, Massachusetts, started production of motion picture projectors in 1919. By the late 1920s they were producing Masonite and wood toys. They produced dollhouses made of Masonite from 1935 through 1955. In 1958 The South Bend Toy Company, of South Bend, Indiana, acquired the Keystone Wood Toy brand name. Playschool eventually acquired South Bend toys. 

This dollhouse came to me new in the box several years ago. It measures 21½" tall, 24½" wide and 16½" deep. The depth of the house makes it perfect for using the larger German Bodo Hennig dollhouse furniture. 

 

I added an extra wall divider to make room for both a nursery and bath. Odd pieces found on Ebay from Keystone houses often come in handy. The wall divider between the nursery and bath is from an original 1955 edition of this 1970s dollhouse. I added wallpaper to each side of the divider to cover the original 1950s era wallpaper.

This dollhouse is filled with Bodo Hennig furniture in 1:10 scale, and is the perfect size for this house.

The dining room was not large enough for the hutch, so the back of it provides a wall for the lady of the house to hang her utensil and spice racks. 

 Bedroom space is rather limited, but just large enough for this set.

The white changing table is not identified as Bodo Hennig, but is marked Made in Germany.

Pretty in yellow, this bath set is just the right size for smaller hands to handle.

Hmmn, maybe I should have put dishes in the hutch instead of books.

The three necessary appliances for the kitchen, plus a broom closet.

I added wallpaper to the back of the dining room hutch.

The sofas and chair set were sold as Bodo Henning but I haven't been able to verify authenticity. The sofa/chair/ottoman combo on the right is from a different production period. There is a slight difference in the fabric, the pieces are filled with polyester fiber and have metal feet. The sofa on the left is filled with rubber foam and is without feet. 

The TV, fireplace and end tables are Bodo Henning products.

All drawers open on the chest and dresser.

The three room dividers.

I like the fancy wooden pulls on the nursery chest.

The four piece bath suite is a lovely shade of yellow.

I have the 1955 edition of this dollhouse and hope to post about it soon. It is currently in line to be refurbished. 

"Oh! It's a Dolly Ann House!"

                                                                             with Patty Cooper 

                                                   and Anne Wiltrakis

This picture is from an ad that appeared in Child Life Magazine in December 1930 advertising dollhouses made by the Macris Company of Toledo, Ohio. In December, Anne Wiltrakis contacted me about a dollhouse in her collection; a red strip around the base of the house indicated it was a Dolly Ann house. Finding a Dolly Ann house on this blog, she wondered if I could share any information about Dolly Ann houses. Anne shared pictures of her dollhouse....it was one I had never seen before. 

This is the front of Anne's Dolly Ann house. The front door is behind the middle pillar. 

The right side of Anne's house shows the chimney and the slope of the roof.

On the back side of the house are two windows, and yes the house is wired for lights!

The left side is open for play. Anne has it furnished with Strombecker and Kage dollhouse pieces and a Realy Truly fridge.

I shared the picture with my go to expert Patty Cooper, who immediately started research for  information on Dolly Ann dollhouses. She found the following  information in the February 1929 issue of Playthings magazine.

Searching for more examples of Dolly Ann houses,  Patty discovered the house below in Antique and Collectible Dollhouses and Their Furnishings, a book she co-authored with Dian Zillner.

This house was not identified in the book, but with identical metal windows, chimney stack and the arched door with green stoop found in later models of Dolly Ann houses, it is reasonable to accept that this was an early model of a Dolly Ann house.

Found in the Marshall Field and Co. Christmas catalog in 1929, the description read "Six room doll house, a little Colonial mansion. 22¾" high, painted yellow with green roof and white trim and equipped with  electric light. The front and back sides of the house can be removed so that a child can easily play with rooms. The house is $25."

This ad was found in Dian Zillner's Dollhouse & Furniture Advertising 1880s - 1980s. She noted that even though no trade name was given, it appeared to be an early Macris model, sighting outside decoration, two chimneys, removable front and back panels and metal window frames like those used on a similar Macris house. She also noted the front door pillars, yellow exterior and green roof followed the Macris pattern.

Two more examples of Dolly Ann houses are  in  Patty's and my collections. This is the larger of the two houses. It has six rooms; four small rooms, a living room that runs the width of the house and an upstairs bedroom that runs the depth of the house.

This Dolly Ann is in Patty's collection. It is also wired for electricity.

With the front panel removed, we see that Patty has filled it  with Converse Realy Truly furniture. A family of  Winsor dollies make their home here.

The back of her house shows more of the highly desirable Realy Truly furniture, including the very rare bathroom fixtures.

This is my same model of the large Dolly Ann house.     

The back of the house with the removable partition.

Embellished Strombecker furniture, introduced in 1932, fills the rooms in my large Dolly Ann. Vintage German Caco dollies live here.

The bath, kitchen and dining room as seen from the back of the house.

The larger Dolly Ann has a feature that is not found in the smaller Dolly Ann. Small holes are found in the top of the frame of the metal windows that hold a U-shaped metal rod used to support curtains. Here's an example of that feature.

This is a my smaller Dolly Ann House, with four rooms.

This is not an optical illusion, all the windows and the chimneys are installed crooked.

Patty has two of the smaller Dolly Ann houses. One of them came with the back cover.

Closed.

Partially open.

Fully open.

One of Patty's small Dolly Ann houses furnished with Kage furniture.

Patty's second small Dolly Ann house furnished with Kage and other maker's dollhouse furniture.

My small Dolly Ann furnished mostly with Kage furniture. It seems we both found Kage furniture perfect for our small Dolly Ann houses! 

I've shown five versions of Dolly Ann dollhouses.

If you have found another version of a Dolly Ann dollhouse, please share a picture and I will add it to this post. Contact me at florinebettge@comcast.net.

Thanks to Anne for asking about Dolly Ann houses and to Patty for making this post possible!