MARINE ENGINE SPECIALTIES, SoHo

by Kevin Walsh

This faces the Holland Tunnel ramps on Broome east of Varick. The painted sign has held up fairly well over the decades. The company supplied power plant equipment such as boilers and pumping systems to the ships in the now-vanished Hudson River port in Manhattan, and also serviced pumps and other equipment. There were branches in Hoboken, NJ and Long Beach, CA. The company went kaput by the mid-1970s. The Hudson River area is now occupied by a park, and much of NYC’s former port is.

4/28/13

4 comments

IFC FIT:: View Blog May 3, 2013 - 6:00 am

MARINE ENGINE SPECIALTIES, SoHo | | Forgotten New YorkForgotten New York

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Susan Nye April 18, 2014 - 2:03 pm

It was always a treat to go to “dad’s” office in the late 1950’s and 60’s at Marine Engine Specialties. There was a lot of excavation then because the World Trade Center was being built nearby and the Holland Tunnel ramps were being reconfigured. My dad was a marine engineer who was killed while boarding a tanker in the Canary Islands in December, 1967, but I remember going up there; the ceilings were so high!
This was a wonderful old building and a part of early NY maritime port history. I hope someone will restore it and leave the outside writing as it is.

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Leslie Barratt May 23, 2014 - 9:56 am

I definitely remember Mr. Louie Nye, who lived in W. Orange, I think, and I remember the horrible phone call we got from Spain (and which my sister had to interpret) in 1967. Marine Engine Specialties (later MESCO) was my father’s company, and it went bankrupt after he died, but I also loved visiting the offices, eating at a small Italian restaurant down the Street, and playing with the giant switchboard his receptionist used. Visiting the NJ offices he moved much of it to in the 1960s and the other company offices around the US was never quite the same because the Broome Street office had a family atmosphere to it. I am really grateful that the facade still has the company name.

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Cecily Burke December 4, 2019 - 12:06 am

I am Edwin Burke’s oldest child, and I have the same memories that my sister Leslie has, plus some others. I was often in the city, attending art classes, and I would go downtown later and drive home to NJ with my father. On two occasions, we had snowstorms and couldn’t drive. That was how I learned of the “secret” room on the top floor that was kitted out with a couple of metal-frame beds; my father (and occasionally, my mother too) used these on such rare occasions when they couldn’t get back to NJ.
I remember the giant freight elevator in this building, which held heavy machinery and sometimes a car. I believe that elevator was an incentive for Claus Oldenburg to buy the building. That elevator was why some of the floors had such high ceilings.
I also remember Mr Nye, and the calls from and to the Canary Islands. I was the translator, or tried to be, struggling to hear and to understand every word while crying. On a happier note, I also remember my father, a heavy-set man, dressed in a Santa suit and playing Santa for all of the employees’ children. The neighborhood around us was very Italian at the time, with Italian-American families living in apartments that are no longer there on the other side of the street. We often went to a small Italian restaurant in the area, called “Mary’s” and run by a woman of that name.

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