Relics: Mail chute

A couple of years ago in "Please Mr. Postman," I marked the prolonged passing of the blue mailbox, no longer needed in the age of text messaging, mobile phones, and social media. Before USPS started carting the Chicago boxes off to rust at the central office (where I saw what seemed to be thousands lined up, with nothing to do and nowhere to go), another type of mail collection method had fallen into disuse—the mail chute.

The first mail chute I saw and used was at 200 South Riverside Plaza in Chicago, at my first job. The chute ran down the wall across the hall from the word processing room on the 37th floor. People still used it then, in 1983. Walking past it, I would be startled by the sudden whoosh of an envelope falling down the chute, presumably on its way to a collection box. Sometimes, however, someone would ambitiously stuff, say, a 9" x 12" envelope into the chute, which had the same effect as some boxes do in trash chutes—it would "gum up the works," as my dad might have said.

I don't recall if the mail chute was still in use when the company relocated to 203 North LaSalle Street in 1986. A contemporary blend of glass, steel, and atrium. this building probably didn't have anything as quaint as a mail chute.

The Flamingo, which opened in the late 1920s, has a mail chute, although it's closed off on the floors. I have no idea where it may have ended, as it's west of the elevators, while the mail collection box in the lobby is on the north wall across from the elevators.

Cutler~Mail~Chute~Co.
Rochester, NY.
Cutler~Mailing~System
Authorized by P.O. Dept.
Installed under the Cutler Patents

Note that it's not just a mail chute and mail collection box, but a <em>mailing system</em>. Product pretentiousness isn't a contemporary invention.

Find out more about the history of the Cutler Mail Chute Co. and the mail chute system at the National Postal Museum site and, of course, Wikipedia.