I noticed this handsome water meter cover on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Magnolia and Hayford, in front of the vacant lot next to the old Hotwater Works building.

The company is the Ford Meter Box Co., so I assume Wabash Box is the name of a model. (Wikipedia’s entry for Ford has a picture of an even handsomer meter cover with “Crescent Box” on it instead.) The Ford Meter Box Co. started in 1898 and is still around and still located in Wabash, Indiana. And it turns out that the founder, Edwin Ford, was not just a meter box seller – he was the inventor of the in-ground outdoor water meter.