Lawndale antique radio museum offers a connection to bygone days.
When you walk into Mac’s Old Time Radio Museum in Lawndale, don’t expect to find a spacious museum with air conditioning and track lighting.
The museum is nothing more than an 18-by-25-foot section at the back of an antique shop on West 147th Street. But there are some real gems among the 130 antique radios, phonographs and wireless sets on display.
Take, for example, the 1937 Stromber Carlson chair-side radio with its controls set in a mirrored top. You don’t find many of those lying around any more, says museum owner Charles MacQuarrie. Or how about the 1932 cathedral radio that was once owned by Dennis Day, the Irish crooner who regularly appeared with Jack Benny. That one was a lucky find, MacQuarrie said.
And you don’t have to be a radio buff to appreciate the 1929 grandfather clock with the built-in radio and record player.
MacQuarrie--everybody calls him Mac--is a 67-year-old bespectacled man who has spent most of his life around radios. He and his wife of 45 years, Terri, opened the museum last month and believe it is the only antique radio museum in Southern California.
That may be the case, according to William Denk, the secretary and treasurer of the Antique Radio Club of America, who said he is not aware of any other such museum in Southern California.
“There are not a large number of radio museums,” he said. “They are rather rare.”
Over the last 20 years, MacQuarrie said he has collected at least 1,000 radios, phonographs and wireless sets, which he keeps at his home and in storage. He repairs and restores each antique himself and sees to it that every radio on display looks and operates like new.
“Once you start repairing and collecting some of those that I call the old basket cases, you become rather attached to them,” he said.
MacQuarrie said he finds most of his antiques, as well as the spare parts for them, at garage sales and swap meets. He strips the old varnish from cabinets and refinishes them. And he adapts many old battery-operated radios to run on household current. The process can take two days of full-time work.
MacQuarrie’s love for radios dates back to the 1930s, when his father was a wireless operator for the Boston & Albany Railroad Line in Charlton, Mass. When MacQuarrie graduated from high school he joined the Army Air Corps and became a flight radio operator assigned to a B-24 bomber crew during World War II.
After the war he worked a short stint as a wireless operator with a commercial airline. But when voice-operated radios came along in the 1950s, MacQuarrie’s job became obsolete. He went into the insurance business for 22 years before he retired 14 years ago and opened “Yesterday’s Treasures” antique shop in Lawndale.
MacQuarrie said he decided to display his collection because it was “just time to share these with someone else.” His museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Since he began collecting radios, MacQuarrie said he has found that a great number of people share his interest.
He said he has received calls from Sherman Oaks, San Diego and as far as Sacramento from people who want to buy a radio or have one repaired.
“I’ve watched the interest in (antique) radios grow in the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s just phenomenal.”
As their popularity grows, so does the price commanded by antique radios, MacQuarrie said. For example, a 1934 Coronado cathedral radio which originally sold for about $60 is now worth about $450, he said.
Not too long ago, MacQuarrie said, someone offered him $2,500 for the grandfather clock-radio.
Although the shop sells some old radios, the items in MacQuarrie’s museum are not for sale. The radios, phonographs and wireless sets that he so lovingly maintains must stay on the shelves, where MacQuarrie said he plans to preserve them for future generations.
“They bring back a lot of memories for people,” he said.
