The 1940s bungalow in Towson was perfect for Cara Kelly and her young family. Original hardwoods to take a beating from her toddler. A covered porch and open floor plan with all that natural light. Only the kitchen gave her pause.

Wedged beside the back door, huge and seemingly immovable, was the beast: a 400-pound Chambers stove from 1947. The kitchen — well, maybe the whole house — seemed built around this dense, iron core.

“I’m staring at it right now,” she said over the phone last week. “You’re an enigma. I don’t know what to do with you.”

The vintage appliance gives Kelly membership to an unexpected club of obsessives. Across Baltimore, there are many home cooks who still strike a match to fire up a gas Chambers oven from the 1940s or 1950s.

There are more familiar ways to roast a Thanksgiving turkey, but around these old ovens are love stories.

Courtship with a Chambers follows a familiar pattern. First, there are doubt and trepidation. What’s a “thermowell” anyway?

Then comes the surprising delight of cooking without the gas on. That’s the Chambers selling point.

Finally, there’s the devotion — till death do us part — that had a former Johns Hopkins University librarian ship her 1951 Chambers across 500 miles to her retirement house in Maine.

The Chambers Fireless Gas Range was designed to be a super insulator. Families could fire up the oven, then turn off the gas and flame – yet continue cooking. The company advertised its stoves as using one-third to one-half less gas than competitors.

A Chambers in Rachael Ray’s early-2000s Food Network TV series, “30 Minute Meals,” was just a pretty set piece, but renowned Boston chef Lydia Shire chose a Chambers to put to work in her home kitchen.

With 1950s aesthetics in fashion, vintage stoves are making a comeback. And the pearly, enamel Chambers has become a favorite among tradwife influencers on TikTok.

It’s not hard to find one around Baltimore. Maybe there was a top Chambers salesman assigned to the region. Or maybe it’s just all the old houses.

The marketplace eBay lists an older model in Charles Village for $1,000. Facebook lists a pristine Model C nearby for $3,000. The recent listings show homes in Towson, Catonsville, Dundalk and Southwest Baltimore sold with Chambers stoves inside.

Kelly remains unconvinced about the 400-pounder in the corner of her new Towson home. She put the Chambers on Craigslist for $400 to test the market.

“We are staying open to the possibility that we have a little culinary gift,” she said, “but I just don’t know.”

Dr. Christina Enzmann had considered replacing her 1950s Chambers Model C during a kitchen makeover of her North Baltimore home. The thermowell, in particular, puzzled her.

Instead, she sought out old manuals and recipe books to embark on a journey of culinary discovery.

“It’s like an old Mercedes,” Enzmann said. “It’s not going to have a digital display, but it’s a great machine.”

On a Wednesday morning five years later, she eased off the lid to the steaming thermowell. The well can serve as a Crock-Pot or even another oven for baking. Inside was juicy, fork-tender brisket. She had slow cooked it overnight — without the gas on.

“Now I’m convinced this is the best oven ever,” she said. “I can never move out of here because I need to have it.”

Pillsbury crescent rolls call for 14-17 minutes in a 350-degree oven. Enzmann arranged the rolls on a pan. She lowered the pan into the thermowell. She ran the gas for five minutes — the well has one temperature, hot — waited another three minutes or so, then lifted out the rolls fully cooked. She cooks oatmeal overnight and wakes to a hot breakfast.

John Chambers began manufacturing stoves in the 1910s and opened a production factory in Shelbyville, Indiana. He set his sights on perfecting the home oven.

“Countless hours have been spent in research work, to improve designs, materials, workmanship, and performances. We know that the Chambers idea is right,” he wrote in a letter published on chamberstoves.net (Yes, this is an oven with a fan site).

The idea was to build a range so heavily insulated that it continued to cook without gas or even kept food cold. The company advertised its distinctive thermowell as able to keep ice cream cold while the oven bakes an apple pie. In one interview, Shire credited her Chambers for perfect chocolate cake: crusty outside, gooey center.

Before Thais Jackson opened Thai’s Pies in Windsor Mill, she was baking in her home Chambers.

“The stove heats quickly and holds its temperature beautifully, so my pie crusts baked evenly every time, to a beautiful golden hue,” she said. “It always produced tender crusts that were never scorched.”

The triple-walled ranges are built of cast iron, with all sides encased in rockwool insulation. In fact, they are so well insulated that a storage compartment beside the oven was advertised as a fire safe — capable of protecting valuables in the event of a house fire.

All this makes a Chambers weigh three times as much as modern, sheet-metal ranges with foam insulation.

“Products of that era were of high quality that were intended to be serviced for decades,” said Andrew Brenton of Landers Appliance in Rosedale. The shop takes service calls routinely for Chambers stoves.

Modern ranges are designed to be affordable and somewhat disposable, with a seven- to 10-year lifespan, Brenton said. The Chambers stoves he sees in Baltimore are 80 or older and often no worse for wear.

By the 1960s, the Chambers company had sold and the factory in Indiana stopped manufacturing ranges. It’s often said the company put itself out of business. Households never needed to buy another one.

When Kelsey Gage closed on a 1930s Colonial near Catonsville, the seller handed her a copy of the old Chambers cookbook.

“I can keep something hot in the oven for two hours if I want to, without running the gas,” said Gage, who is 11 months into her Chambers love affair. “It kind of brings the joy of cooking back.”

Gregory Oliveri decided that only a Chambers stove would do as he renovated the kitchen of his 1861 house in Philadelphia.

They’re harder to find in Pennsylvania, so he settled on a pale yellow one for sale in Baltimore and drove down with a moving truck.

“There were a huge concentration of listings in the Baltimore area,” he said.

Pamela Higgins and her husband bought a home in Rodgers Forge in the early 1980s and inherited a 1950s Chambers. The stove was pristine and original to the house. In wintertime, her kids would sit against it to warm up after school.

She had two friends in Baltimore with the stoves, too. Her family hauled that stove through three moves and finally to Yarmouth, Maine. Since retiring there, she hasn’t seen another one.

Higgins finds something intuitive about cooking on her Chambers.

“Maybe we were made for each other,” she said.