[HN Gopher] New York City's Mail Chutes (2015)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       New York City's Mail Chutes (2015)
        
       Author : tonyedgecombe
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2020-06-25 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
        
       | dhosek wrote:
       | I've worked in buildings in Chicago with these. The mail slot is
       | just a little too narrow to fit a Netflix envelope.
        
         | brianwawok wrote:
         | A lot of Chicago buildings had steam chutes to send mail up
        
         | vxNsr wrote:
         | Probably a good thing. Mail falling on top would likely break
         | the dvd
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | I used one in a building in downtown SF. Works like a charm.
        
       | woodruffw wrote:
       | The building that I grew up in (built right before the Great
       | Depression) had one of these. I sent letters down it a few times.
       | 
       | I also tried to send a banana down it, which wasn't appreciated
       | by the super. It turns out there isn't an easy way to retrieve a
       | banana stuck between floors, short of sending something bigger
       | through.
        
         | dkdk8283 wrote:
         | Lol. Why a banana? That's funny - of course not to the super.
        
           | woodruffw wrote:
           | No good explanation; I was maybe 8.
        
       | OldHand2018 wrote:
       | My office is in a building with a Cutler Mail Chute in active
       | service with daily pickup service from the Postal Service.
       | 
       | It just adds that extra bit of character to an old building,
       | especially with the floor-to-ceiling glass. Every so often,
       | you'll see that flash of white out of the corner of your eye as
       | an envelope from an upper floor falls past you.
       | 
       | They do get clogged, and someone has to notice and let the
       | building management know. This can be a problem if the blockage
       | is on an unoccupied floor - the mail needs to pile up until it is
       | visible on a floor with a tenant!
        
       | solotronics wrote:
       | What would be a modern analogy of this I wonder?
        
         | fsckboy wrote:
         | trash chutes! tall buildings today, especially in NYC but many
         | other places too, have trash chutes on every floor. It's very
         | satisfying to open the door and hear my bag of kitchen trash
         | hit the sides as it falls 250+ feet and slams into the bottom
         | (which is a chute into a trash compactor)
         | 
         | one company that cleans them is called 1-800-CHUTE-ME
         | 
         | there is also a button in the elevator called "taxi". if you
         | push it, it lights a red light on the end of the awning over
         | the sidewalk out front. Back in the day, a taxi could notice it
         | and stop. You see them around NYC but the taxis don't really
         | pay attention to them any more.
        
       | waterfowl wrote:
       | Are these that unusual/dated? I read the article and couldn't
       | tell if these are distinct from mail chutes in general. Both my
       | home and office buildings in DC have them and they're neither
       | very like, historic grand buildings.
       | 
       | Pretty sure the house and senate office buildings also both
       | contain these.
        
         | supertrope wrote:
         | Contemporary fire code considers laundry and mail chutes weak
         | points for a fire spreading between floors. First class mail
         | volume peaked in 2001. https://about.usps.com/who-we-
         | are/postal-history/first-class...
        
         | wsh wrote:
         | Mail chutes were a common feature of buildings for many years,
         | and not only in New York City.
         | 
         | The sixth (1970) and seventh (1981) editions of _Architectural
         | Graphic Standards_ discuss them on the "Planning for Postal
         | Service in Office Buildings" pages. From the latter:
         | CHUTES: Used in buildings of at least four stories.       The
         | chute must be approximately 2 x 8 in. in cross       section
         | and extend in a continuously vertical line       from the
         | beginning point to the receiving box or       mailroom. The
         | interior of the chute must be access-       ible throughout its
         | entire length. Chutes installed       in pairs are constructed
         | with a divider and dual       receiving boxes. Chutes are for
         | first class mail only.
        
       | kube-system wrote:
       | I've worked in buildings with these, but I've never seen one that
       | made me feel confident that my mail was actually going to be
       | picked up at the other end. Given some of the examples in the
       | article, maybe that was a wise doubt to have.
        
       | electricslpnsld wrote:
       | Our apartment building in Manhattan had one of these, it was
       | super fun to fill! We also had a garbage chute... guess which one
       | was more likely to get clogged when it was 98 degrees and 90%
       | humidity mid August
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2020-06-25 23:00 UTC)