One of the most fun things about my sketching is doing some subsequent research and learning things about obscure, but commonplace, things I draw. I've seen mail boxes like this may times over the years, but never really thought about them until I happened to draw this one, which is located in the Clark Street Station in Brooklyn Heights, adjacent to the lobby of the Hotel St George.
As urban office buildings grew vertically in the early 20th century, a problem arose with mail delivery. It was a pain for tenants to descend the the ground to visit a mailbox. The solution came from James Goold Cutler of Rochester, NY. He invented the Cutler Mail Chute in 1884. They were glass fronted chutes that ran the length of the building, with deposit slots on each floor and a receiving box on the ground floor. At first, they were limited to train stations and public buildings, but in 1905, the Postal Service allowed them to be installed in private buildings of a certain height.
The Cutler Co. enjoyed a virtual monopoly on mail chutes for decades. The boxes were all elaborated designed, but not standardized. This example is actually less ornate than many other examples. Cutler were often customize a box to meet the architectural aesthetic of a specific building, executing boxes in Beaux Arts, Art Deco, or Art Nouveau styles.
As the quantity of mail increased, as well as the size of packages, chronic clogged mail chutes became an increasing problem. In the 1980s, an mail chute in the McGraw Hill Building on 42nd St. was unclogged, releasing an avalanche of mail that filled 23 sacks. In 1995, a chute in a Michigan veterans' hospital was cleared. A woman named Marguerite Grisdale Lynch in Brooksville, Florida, received a letter her husband, who had died 19 years prior, had mailed in 1945!
Fire codes in the 1990s prohibited the installation of new chutes, and many buildings switched to dedicated mail rooms. But there are still many active mail chutes, including over 900 in New York City and 360 in Chicago.
Sources:
Smithsonian National Postal Museum
Atlas Obscura: New York City's Mail Chutes Are Lovely, Ingenious And Almost Entirely Ignored
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