REX Cole (1887-1967) was originally a lamp manufacturer, then became associated with General Electric in the 1920s and designed white enamel Monitor Top refrigerators. Famed architect Raymond Hood designed a series of buildings in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the Grand Concourse, and Northern Blvd. in Flushing for Cole’s showrooms that either looked like refrigerators or featured them in the design! Most are still standing but have been altered beyond recognition. Enamel signs proclaiming Cole’s GE refrigerators can still be found on a handful of buildings around town.
The modernistic Rex Cole building shown here stood on 4th Avenue and 64th Street in Bay Ridge long before the Gowanus Expressway was constructed through the intersection. The showrooms looked very modernistic for their time and boasted a distinct architectural style. I think the modern cognate is the series of distinct showrooms built to display Apple Computer poroducts, like the one in the former Western Beef supermarket at 9th Avenue and 14th Street: the “cube” structure at 5th Avenue and 58th in Manhattan; and the oblong Apple store on Flatbush Avenue near One Hanson in downtown Brooklyn.
It must be remembered that electric appliances were still in their relative youth in the 1930s. We were not far removed from the generations when we heated homes by burning wood and entertained ourselves by conversation, playing cards, and well, by producing new family members.
I like the white enamel signs, which though they were placed in the 1930s, almost look like they were designed recently. They can pop up all over town on apartment buildings where you least expect them. They were placed on apartment buildings that purchased General Electric products designed by Cole.
The signs seem to break a key typographic rule: don’t use too many fonts. The signs make it work since the most streamlined of them, Futura, is used for Rex Cole’s name.
The Rex Cole showroom in Flushing, at Northern Boulevard and Leavitt Street just south of the Latimer Museum, still stands. You can see the way it looks now at the top of the page, where it now serves as a Buddhist temple. It hasn’t been substantially altered from the old days and still has the large picture windows in front.
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6/6/24