i love these too. Perhaps related, but in London: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewf/3264679830/in/set-72157612929622630/

The guy who would have the answer is Paul Shaw.

I assume they were drafted by the architect in his elevation, and executed by stone masons along with the rest of the details.
Architects were familiar with drafting letters for the descriptive text in their plans, and fitted the style of lettering to the style of the building, so were practised and knowledgeable letterers. If lettering was required to appear on the buildings, they were up to the task. Although the L and M here are a tad wide, and the R too narrow.

The use of a period is interesting.
The Wall Street Journal still uses a period in its nameplate.

the owner of a desktop publishing business once told me
that he had learned never to take on architects as clients.

"they always want something that's just slightly different,
and they're always overly particular about what they want.
so it always takes twice as much time to make 'em happy."

true, and funny too... :+)

-bowerbird

Thanks, Nick, it didn’t occur to me that the letters would have been drawn by the architect. This would make a lot of sense—I’ve noticed that similar buildings from one neighborhood and one time period have matching letters. I assumed that the letters were cast or metal, but it probably is because the architect was drawing them all.

I’ll still talk about it with James Mosely and Paul Shaw, tho.