[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)