Walter Grutchfield - Merchants Refrigerating

Merchants Refrigerating, 30-32 Beach St., New York, 2002

This is a rare "vintage" sign that is carved in stone. There are others: for instance, "Dept of Water Supply Gas and Electricity" a block away on West Broadway between Beach and Franklin streets.
This block of Beach Street (between Varick and Hudson) is now called Ericsson Place, but it was Beach Street in the 1890s when this building was constructed for the Merchants Refrigerating and Ice Manufacturing Co.

Merchants were warehousemen, offering general as well as cold and freezing storage.
They had offices on Chambers Street and a number of warehouses scattered around the downtown New York area, including this building, which forms a pair with a building to its immediate south at 35-37 North Moore. (35-37 North Moore has an identical stone-carved sign (differing only in the numerals)).

Merchants shortened its name from "Merchants Refrigerating and Ice Manufacturing Co." to "Merchants Refrigerating Co." in 1896. So the sign was probably part of the original building construction, approximately 1893.
The sign is also interesting for its abbreviation of "manufacturing" to "manufacg". I'm not sure I have ever seen this form before. It's almost as if they were writing the full word but ran out of space because the building wasn't wide enough!

Somewhere around 1910 this building no longer appears in Merchants' list of warehouses. Rather the building next door at 22-28 Beach St. (nicknamed the Ice House?) with entrance also on North Moore (no. 27) takes its place.

Kevin Walsh has a photograph of a Merchants Refrigerating sign on a warehouse at 11th Ave. and 17th St. on his website at Forgetten New York.