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Crescent Box by Nick Marinello It didn’t make much sense for Edwin Ford to be in the Crescent City, but that had never stopped anyone before—or since. The year was 1921, and Ford was in town to pay a sales call on George Earl, the superintendent of the Sewerage and Water Board. The details of the conversation are unknown but the discussion would result in an unlikely but enduring symbol of the city. Ford, a native of Indiana, was a manufacturer of waterworks hardware. About 20 years earlier he had invented a water meter box to facilitate the monitoring of water usage. In responding to the severity of the Indiana winter, Ford had designed an enclosed, insulated box that was positioned three feet into the ground to prevent meter freeze-ups.
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The design was effective for Indiana, but there was nothing in Ford’s fledgling product line that was suitable for either warm climates or the tenuous solidity of south Louisiana soil. For Ford, who apparently was gifted at improvisation, this was not a deal breaker. Earl, for his part, was overseeing a massive program to raise his city out of the muck, and was in need of, among other things, a replacement for the current meter settings that typically either choked with mud or protruded from the settling earth in a most unsightly way. It was a match made in Heaven, or at least at the crossroads of supply and demand. Ford went back to his factory in Wabash, sketched out the design for a meter box that could be used in frost-free settings and adjusted to grade. Named in honor of Ford’s new
municipal client, the Crescent Box was soon put into production and by 1924 constituted nearly half of the Ford Meter Box Co.’s sales. End of story. Or it would be, except for the curious design emblazoned on the meter box lid that has beguiled pedestrians for the past 90 years. Look down at most any sidewalk in New Orleans and you’ll likely see the now iconic cast-iron lid depicting a crescent moon radiating shafts of light interspersed with stars. Ford, evidently a polymath of the first order, is said to have drawn up the design for the Crescent Box lid. It’s not difficult to suss out his inspiration. The art on the lid clearly references the Indiana state flag, which had been adopted only four years earlier in 1917. That design also consists of stars and rays of light, though instead of a crescent moon, these symbols surround the central figure of a flaming torch, which is said to represent “liberty and enlightenment.” Designed by Indiana artist Paul Hadley, the image on the Indiana flag is stately and succinct, the kind of graphic that, fluttering in the wind, inspires songs and salutes. To his immense credit, Ford abandoned any such sense of stateliness in his composition, which is more randomly and crudely wrought and thus a more fitting symbol to adorn the ramshackle sidewalks of New Orleans. If his artwork inspires a song, it’s being played on a corner somewhere by a pickup band put together four minutes ago. If you want elegance, nobility and panache, opt for the fleur de lis. And herein, perhaps, is the charm and mystique of the Crescent Box: it appeals to the funkier angels of our nature. Its moon and stars cast light not to illuminate but to dazzle and spellbind, to point not upward to liberty and enlightenment but downward to the infrangible, if humble, dignity of this city that exists just barely —and not always—above the muck and mud. Nick Marinello is features editor for Tulanian.