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Mail chute

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Empire State Bldg inactive mail chutes, 2007
Akron law building active mail chute, 2019
Alfred I. DuPont Building mail chute, 2015

A mail chute is a largely defunct letter collection device used in early multi-story office buildings, hotels, apartment buildings and other high rise structures. Letters were dropped from the upper stories and collected (usually at the ground level) at a central depository by the postal service. This innovation was before the time of the modern mailroom normally associated nowadays with high rise buildings. It was for the convenience of the users of the building so they would not have to take their mail to an outside mail box or to the post office.

Architect James Goold Cutler invented this new type of mail-delivery in 1883. He formed a company and was the only manufacturer of mail chutes and the associated collection receiving boxes for the first 20 years of existence. Cutler manufactured thousands of these mail chute systems over the decades that were installed in many high-rise buildings across the United States. The National Fire Protection Association has not allowed mail chutes from being put into new buildings after 1997. About the same time many of the buildings that had them have closed off their mail chutes and no longer use them. Today there are about 900 active mail chute systems in New York City buildings and 360 buildings in Chicago that still use them.


Original design and usage

Architect James Goold Cutler on September 11, 1883, received US patent 284951 for the mail chute collection system. It was a new type of mail-delivery system in an office building or apartment building of several stories. It consisted of a mailbox and a vertical channel chute through which letters were moved by means of gravity. His invention was a wall-mounted container at the ground-floor level of a high rise building which was fed by a glass-paneled vertical tube the height of the building. Letters to be mailed would be deposited through slots on the channel on each floor and would fall loosely to the first floor to be collected in a mailbox. The chute was designed so it could be opened to free up any letters that got stuck in the falling process. The idea was that letters and other paper objects like postcards to be mailed could be delivered at the first floor and higher floors of a building by the sender without having to personally hand carry the object to the building mail room.[1] The occupants of a building no longer had to find a mail box on the street to deposit their mail as the local Post Office department collected the mail deposited at the first floor of a building by the mail chutes.[2]

Cutler installed the first mail chute system in 1884 at the Elwood Building at Main Street and State Street in Rochester, New York. He received over 30 patents for modifications of his mail chute system. The original approved patent design stated that the first floor mailbox must be made of metal and marked U.S. Letter Box with a slot labelled letters. The mailbox had to have a door that opened on hinges, with the the door bottom not less than 2 feet 6 inches off the floor. If the structure where the mail chute collection system was installed was several stories tall, the receiving collection area was to be have a soft padding to prevent any damage to the fallen mail.[3]

The first Cutler mail chute system proved to be a success at the Rochester Elwood Building, so then it was installed in New York City office buildings and railroad stations.[3] Eventually Cutler then started The Cutler Manufacturing Company to make mail chutes and collection boxes.[4] The company later became Cutler Mail Chute Company and produced over 1,600 systems for buildings over the next 20 years.[5] The United States postal service then had Cutler mail chutes placed in hotels over five stories tall. The systems were also installed in apartment buildings of over 50 units.[6] Cutler mail chutes were to high-rise buildings as post office street mailboxes were to residential neighborhoods.[7] Congress in 1893 placed all mail chutes and its mail under the supervision of the Post Office Department. Cutler's company was the only maker of mail chute systems until 1904.[2]

Current use

There was more than 40,000 letters in 1986 that got stuck in the mail chute system of the McGraw-Hill Building in New York City.[8] New York City district of the Postal Service recorded in 1999 the service responded to at least two calls a week to clear mail chutes that were hung up with stuck mail.[8]

In more recent decades, buildings such as Chicago's John Hancock Center, the Chrysler Building, and New York City's old RCA Building have shut down their chutes.[5] The reason is the increase of modern mailrooms in the building lobby with associated mail boxes available for the building tenants.[5] There remain, however, about 360 buildings in Chicago with mail chutes, and about 900 active mail chutes exist in New York City.[9] Since 1997, however, the National Fire Protection Association has not allowed mail chutes in new building construction. According to historian Boban Docevski, buildings currently using mail chutes are the Chanin Building, Trinity Building, Empire State Building, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, as well as the Lenox Hotel in Back Bay, Boston.[10]

See also

Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mail chutes.
  1. ^ Greene 2014, p. 4.
  2. ^ a b "Cutler Mail Box & Chute". Smithsonian Institution museum. Retrieved August 1, 2022.
  3. ^ a b Greene 2014, p. 5.
  4. ^ "The Elwood Building". Monroe County Library System (NY). Retrieved August 1, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c Overfelt, Maggie (2022). "CNNMoney article - Gone but Not (Quite) Forgotten". Retrieved August 1, 2022.
  6. ^ "Mail Chute Men in Merger; Cutler and Other Companies Join in a $2,000,000 Corporation". The New York Times. May 9, 1909. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
  7. ^ a b Schneider, Daneil B. (9 May 1999). "F.Y.I." The New York Times. Retrieved November 7, 2013.
  8. ^ Spencer, Luke. "New York City's Mail Chutes are Lovely, Ingenious and Almost Entirely Ignored". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved August 1, 2022.
  9. ^ "Ingenious Deco mail chutes inside early US skyscrapers-love them". Retrieved August 1, 2022.

Sources

  • Greene, Karen (2014). Art Deco Mailboxes: An Illustrated Design History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393734096.
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