Rex Cole Air Circulator A3174
Great deco or machine age design. Measures 15" high and 14.5" in diameter. Beautiful original green paint with complementary aluminum features. One-speed on the OFF-ON Switch. An aluminum cone under the top directs the air outward through the horizontal aluminum grillwork. Works great.
Rex Cole, who was born about 1887 in Port Huron, Mich., started work at age 16 as an electrician, and by World War I he had his own lamp manufacturing company. He was soon associated with General Electric, and in the mid-1920's the company chose him to promote its new line of white enamel Monitor Top refrigerators, which had the motor, compressor and condenser in a drum-like container on the top of the cabinet. Cole contacted the visionary architect Raymond Hood -- who designed the American Radiator Building on West 40th Street, the former Daily News Building at 42nd and Second and the old McGraw-Hill Building on West 42nd Street -- and in 1931 Cole built at least three spectacular refrigerator showrooms from Hood's designs. Atop his Brooklyn building, which was banded by the words ''Rex Cole'' in lower-case modernistic lettering, rose a huge white Monitor Top refrigerator, perhaps 15 feet high, with the prominent ''GE'' script monogram.
