Perfecto

On Friday, I discovered this cigar box at one of my job sites, embedded in the cinder fill section of the roof slab and uncovered during our parapet replacement work.

The building is located in Manhattan on Second Avenue and East 19th Street and was constructed in the 1920s.

This is the same building as my Wednesday, July 11, 2012 post, featuring brickwork manufactured by Staples.

The packaging is so intricately designed with Art Deco motifs and the colors are amazingly brilliant after all these years. I haven't attempted to clean the debris from the box yet since the paper is very delicate.

I found a photo on Blogger David B. Finlayson page of a Bayuk tin box, that might have held the paper cartons like the one I found.

Discoveries like this one, artifacts of the day laborers past that helped build our city are mind blowing. I've seen workers still leave their mark for our predecessors to find in the future. Like this one that was drawn into the leveling slab in a bathroom alteration on Park Avenue last year. It bares no name or date. Just a small marker for the location of origin.