“Thats the way it was with my 59 Pontiac in school in the winter. If it was near or below zero out, I couldn’t let it sit for more than four hours or it wouldn’t start.”
Bing–Yours wasn’t the only one!
I had a college friend whose '59 Catalina was just like that, and his solution–like yours–was to go out & start it up every 4 hours!
While in town once and approaching a traffic light on a fairly cold day I noticed a blue haze floating around. Come to find out that the haze was from a cast iron, pot bellied stove that some yokel had in the back of his late 60s Ford full size station wagon.
The left rear panel glass had been removed and replaced with a piece of sheet metal. The roughly 3 foot high stovepipe had been routed through the sheet metal and he had a fire going in the stove.
It would seem to me to be far easier to fix a heater problem no matter the cause rather than go through something like adding a red hot, wood burning stove to the area directly behind the driver. A heavy, hot stove sailing forward during a collision could make the day turn out to be a pretty bad one when coals and burning logs start flying… 
An inventive friend of mine worked in a manufacturing plant where they stamped metal parts. The starter on his car had the solenoid fail, and he found a large red button switch used to actuate the stamping press and put in on the dash, bypassing the key and solenoid, thus actuating the starter directly. It worked great, but looked weird.
@Docnick … I did something similar to that recently. The “Start” position on my 20 year old Corolla’s ignition switch is starting to fail, higher resistance in the switch contacts than it should, which was preventing the starter selenoid from fully engaging at times. So I went down to Radio Shack and purchased a 40 Amp relay for $4.95, wired it in so the ignition switch only has the 30 ohm low current load to power up the relay coil, and the 40 Amp relay contacts now pass the high current needed to activate the starter selenoid. For a total cost of $4.95, no complaints, and works great.
Like your friend, I have a separate button installed to press to start the engine too, but I did that before. I like the idea used on newer cars of pressing a button to start the engine. Seems more civilized.
An old Ford Econoline van that I bought for a song from my grandfather had been rigged up in a similar fashion–A black button he’d installed on the dash started the vehicle, as the ‘start’ position on the ignition switch had failed. A second headlight switch was next to the original, as the position that ran the headlights had failed too. So you turned one on for the parking/running lights, and the other on for the headlights, which was similar to a repair I did on my first car, where I added a second floor switch for the headlights next to the hi/lo beam dimmer. My grandad had also installed a slide switch for the courtesy lights in the van, as that portion of the switch had failed too.
@GeorgeSanJose The “button” in my friend’s case was a 3" diameter red button pushed by the palm of the operator to start the punch press. It could handle a huge amountof current. It bypassed the regular iginiton and put the power directy to the starter.
He told people riding with him is was his personal “panic button”.