Broome St Between 6th Ave and Varick St

    

This block has mostly stayed below the radar of developers and seems untouched for the moment. This isn't to say there's not construction or eminent changes. But as the surrounding blocks all have glassy towers shooting up from the ground, this one remains strangely dormant.

Towards Varick, an old narrow building has barely-visible lettering which reads "Maritime Engine Specialties Corp.". A post and subsequent comment thread on the Fading Ad blog reveals a bit about its history:

The Marine Engine Specialties Corp. was headquartered in San Francisco and had branches in Long Beach, California and New York. The Long Beach branch was opened in 1967. There was also a service facility in Hoboken. The company supplied power plant equipment, such as boilers, and pumping systems to the commercial maritime industry as well as to the Defense Department. They also serviced ship pumps made by other manufacturers. The New York harbor, one of the busiest in the world, must have been a great market for them, but at some point after 1974 they apparently went out of business. – Robert Baptista

The rest of the thread is rather interesting, and includes a few former employees chiming in. You can see more at the original post, or the new Fading Ad Blog site.