August 11, 2005
Poultry Food
Home of Hollybrook and Pamunkey Poultry Foods Cleanest Best
Warehouse No. 2 (and a palimpsest of company names)
North 18th and East Marshall Streets
I drove through the warehouse district in Shockoe Bottom this afternoon and caught this sign fading visibly. Or maybe it's just the light and the ivy. This building is located right at the entrance to the collapsed train tunnel. That grassy, gravely area in the foreground is where the train tracks used to run. Beyond that loading dock is a swampy mass of overgrowth that is too thick in high summer to see through to the tunnel entrance, which can only be photographed in winter at this point. I googled on "Hollybrook and Pamunkey" and got nothing, they must have been a very local outfit or maybe the company name didn't have enough mass appeal. "Poultry Foods" always makes me think of how "pasteurized processed cheese food" is not really cheese and perhaps "poultry food" is not exactly poultry. But I'm sure it tastes like chicken.
Hollybrook and Pamunkey are places in Virginia. Here's a story of some people born near Hollybrook. Pamunkey is the name of an Indian tribe and a river.
I just read that some (more) of the warehouses in this area will be converted to apartments and the developers are going to maintain the character of the exteriors. Some of the great old signs were ruined by graffiti (the perpetrator was caught and had to go to jail!), such as the Union Paper Towel Company sign which included a little black dog with a voice bubble saying "Union Towels are bone dry!", but maybe some of the others will be preserved.
280 words | August 11, 2005 09:06 PM | Ghost signs