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, or Cutler mailing system.
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 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 receiving box. Sometimes, however, someone would ambitiously stuff, say, a 9″ x 12″ envelope into the chute, which had the same effect as 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 on the same south wall as the elevators, while the mail receiving box in the lobby is on the north wall across from the elevators. Mail is collected from the receiving box once a day, ostensibly at 10 a.m., but it was afternoon the one time I saw the carrier come in to open it.
Cutler mail chute, Flamingo, ChicagoCutler receiving box, Flamingo lobby, ChicagoDetail of the Flamingo’s Cutler receiving box, with possibly hand-hammered eagle and disguised keyholeThe patented Cutler mailing system, Rochester, N.Y.
Cutler~Mail~Chute~Co. Rochester, N.Y. Cutler~Mailing~System Authorized by P.O. Dep’t. Installed under the Cutler Patents
Note that it’s not just a mail chute and mail receiving box, but the Cutler mailing system. Product pretentiousness isn’t a contemporary invention.
Cutler mail chute, 11th floor, Garland Building, ChicagoReceiving box in Garland Building lobby, Chicago, with discreet Cutler branding
Find out more about the history of the Cutler Mail Chute Co. and the Cutler mailing system at the National Postal Museum site and, of course, Wikipedia.
Added 2/19/2017: You can see more examples in New York City at Atlas Obscura and learn about why mail chutes were discontinued.
The mother of all mail-chute jams occurred in 1986 between the lobby and the basement of the McGraw-Hill Building at 330 W. 42nd St. Workers removed cinder blocks to rescue 40,000 pieces of mail, filling 23 postal sacks.
Rural phone booth in southern Illinois, an hour northeast of Metropolis
Once upon a time, all Clark Kent had to do to summon his inner Superman was to pop into the nearest telephone booth, tear off his glasses (not in the careful two-handed way recommended by opticians), and rip open his shirt. (His tailor must have made a mint replacing buttons while wondering who were these women so eager to get to the nerdy reporter’s chest.)
Telephone booth? Back up. What’s a telephone booth?
Like many things associated with the traditional telephone, the phone booth is almost only a memory. Aside from Clark Kent/Superman, who needs a phone in the relative privacy of a booth when, with our smart phones, we can chat openly about our hemorrhoid surgery or latest squabble with a friend right on the bus or at our restaurant table? Access to the world is in our pockets.
The last time I used a phone booth or pay phone was in 1999, when I called a cab after my high school reunion. It was in a decaying shopping center across the road from where I used to live, and quite possibly was the only one for miles around. The last pay phone I recall seeing in Chicago was here where I live. It lasted for a few years after I moved in, but has been removed; it wouldn’t have been worth it to the phone company. I have seen a pay phone recently; it was at Jasper Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana, attached to one of the buildings the attendant told us had been built during the Great Depression. I’m sorry now that I didn’t take a photo or check out the cost of a call, but it did seem to be in good shape. I wonder how much action it gets from the hunters and the visitors to the sandhill cranes, or if it’s even functional.
Mobile communications alone didn’t kill the phone booth or pay phone, although they’re clearly the primary cause of near extinction. In cities like Chicago, they were already on the endangered list, placed there by the activities of neighborhood drug dealers and other criminal types who used them to conduct business. Community members petitioned the city to have these gang and criminal magnets removed.
For fans of the classic films and TV shows, phone booths and pay phones have long been associated with crime. Calls made from phone booths and pay phones could be threats, demands (often for ransom), warnings, information dumps, or pleas for help. The dangling public phone handset became a poignant, then cliched theme. Now, having said that, I can’t think of any examples. I do remember that in Strangers on a Train the Farley Granger character has a fatal conversation with his pregnant, cheating wife on a pay phone.
Other movie characters also flocked to booths and pay phones, including reporters — which could explain Clark Kent’s predilection for them. In a film or radio program, when a big story broke frenzied herds of frantic, aggressive reporters would race to the nearest booth or pay phone to call the story in. Having gotten the scoop, the lucky ones who arrived first could gloat over their unlucky brethren, whose continued employment often depended on being able to get through to the newsroom first.
As I remember them, phone booths and pay phones came in a variety of styles, including indoor and outdoor, full sized or half, fully or partially enclosed, or open (for example, a pay phone stuck on a wall, as at Jasper Pulaski). When I was a child, a local pay phone call was a dime; later it went up to a quarter, then 30 cents, then 50 cents or more. For a toll (long-distance) call, you’d put in so much change for so many minutes. Each time you were running out of time, an operator or, later, an automated voice would tell you to deposit more or hang up. If you didn’t have more change, you’d find yourself cut off abruptly soon after the warning. Those who use their mobile phones for personal chats could learn some of the succinctness imposed by the pay phone.
A pay phone played an important role in my life. My college dormitory had two pay phones off the lounge. Before I got a phone installed in my room, I spent a lot of time in those booths calling my mother collect and pretending not to be homesick. I imagine phone booths and pay phones have absorbed a lot of very interesting and very mundane conversations and history, just like mobile phones today.
For a look at phone booths and pay phones, and some of the holdovers, check out the Payphone Project, featuring the sometimes creepy photography that abandoned human creations can inspire. The Payphone Projects quotes a recent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story:
The American Public Communications Council, a trade group representing about 800 independent pay phone operators, said about 425,000 pay phones remain in the United States today, down from 2.2 million in 2000.
According to Wikipedia, as of June 2011, there were 327,577,529 mobile phones in use in the U.S. alone — more than there were people.
I suppose Clark Kent has long since found an alternative changing room.
Update: Chris Burdick on Facebook:
I thought I was the last non-cell phone person, but a woman just used the pay phone near where I’m sitting. The woman dialed a number, the phone gave off a loud fax machine shriek, and the woman backed away in terror.
Added October 2, 2022
As many times as I’ve been to Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center, I’d never spotted this before. It’s a working pay phone, but don’t use it to call 911. And a relic with a relic.
During the annual Black Friday shopping event, Americans spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need and that don’t make them happy or happier, just poorer and unsatisfied. Then, like Charlie Brown, they wonder what happened to the spirit of Christmas.
I passed some time in Poets Corner, which occupies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the abbey. The monuments are generally simple; for the lives of literary men afford no striking themes for the sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have statues erected to their memories; but the greater part have busts, medallions, and sometimes mere inscriptions. Notwithstanding the simplicity of these memorials, I have always observed that the visitors to the abbey remained longest about them. A kinder and fonder feeling takes place of that cold curiosity or vague admiration with which they gaze on the splendid monuments of the great and the heroic. They linger about these as about the tombs of friends and companions; for indeed there is something of companionship between the author and the reader. Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure: but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate. He has lived for them more than for himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoyments, and shut himself up from the delights of social life, that he might the more intimately commune with distant minds and distant ages. Well may the world cherish his renown; for it has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure. Well may posterity be grateful to his memory; for he has left it an inheritance, not of empty names and sounding actions, but whole treasures of wisdom, bright gems of thought, and golden veins of language.
On Sunday, November 13, I met J. at the Starbucks near the Homewood train station, where we began our trip to Jasper Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana. Here each November and December thousands of sandhill cranes congregate on their way south to Georgia and Florida.
As with some of our visits to other state areas, most of the journey was pretty straightforward until the very end, at which point we couldn’t figure out where or how to get in. We ended up on gravel roads, with no sign of an observation tower or, more urgently, a loo. Finally we parked in a small lot and walked back toward the road, where J. flagged down a passing car whose driver happened to know exactly where to send us. What a relief — in every sense. I have to admit that every step of this quarter-mile walk was excruciatingly painful for me thanks to the worst sciatic flareup I’ve had. (By Monday night I wouldn’t be able to walk and would have to take a cab home from work.)
At last we found the cranes in a nondescript field, the primary feature of which seems to be the lack of human habitation and farming activity. I haven’t read much about the habitat here, but it must offer a comfortable food supply, for the herd of cranes had been joined by another herd — one consisting of several dozen impressively sized deer. It was hard to tell which herd the observers, which ranged in age from under 8 to about 80, found more interesting. Don’t suburbanites see enough deer in their backyards? There’s something special about seeing them in the “wild,” as it were.
In my state, I’d forgotten to bring my binoculars from the car, so I didn’t get a good look at the flock; they kept their distance. I’m not sure how J.’s photos will turn out.
Then, about an hour before sunset, more cranes started to fly in, in groups of about six to eighteen. They kept coming and coming and coming, tapering off only as the twilight deepened, many flying overhead, delicately silhouetted against the sky and croaking in that eerie way sandhill cranes have. When I’d first walked up, I had heard them before I’d seen them.
Not for the first time I thought about how the country must have been 200 or 300 years ago, when some bird congregations could number in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Now the only limitless species seem to be the European house sparrow and the European starling. Even so, the little groups coming in for the night were a wondrous sight.
I had been surprised by the number of people spending their Sunday with the cranes (although several seemed to be keeping up with various football contests) and by how many, like J., stayed until it was too dark to take photos or to see the cranes.
On the way back we stopped at a restaurant where we seemed to be the only patrons, a place that still offers a smoking area (still used, judging from the pervasive odor that I’d hoped to forget someday).
Like much of Illinois, Indiana is flat and featureless. I’ve always been glad to book trips on Amtrak trains that pass through Indiana primarily during the darkest night hours, when all that can be seen are the circles of light at countless stations, warehouses, depots, parking lots, and small businesses and industries. That’s true elsewhere in the east, but at least a place like Pennsylvania can boast forested mountains and burbling (if polluted) creeks. Earlier, while passing the trailers (singles and doubles) and the decaying farm houses and deteriorating barns, I thought of all the beautifully maintained, neat farmhouses and barns nestled on bucolic lanes we’d passed in Wisconsin and I could think only one thing:
Cows must pay better than corn and industrial farming.
Date: Wednesday, December 16, 1998
Source: Diane L. Schirf.
Section: COMMENTARY
Column: Voice of the people (letter.)
Dateline: CHICAGO
Copyright CHICAGO TRIBUNE
TREE ABUSE
Trees cleanse our air and return oxygen to us. In spring, they come alive, blooming with buds, sometimes flowers, and finally leaves. In autumn, they shower us with the beauty of reds, golds, oranges, yellows. Even in mid-winter, their bark and hollows provide food and shelter for everything from insects to deer.
A tree can be a comfort, always there, always lovely.
Not in Chicago.
Many Chicagoans apparently see one thing and one thing only when they see a tree: A bulletin board. In the flesh of each of the venerable trees outside my building reside 30 or more thumbtacks. Moving sales, lost pets, housecleaning services — all are an excuse to find another use for the tree.
Climb a tree; water a tree; write an ode to a tree. Do not stab a tree and walk away.
POSTSCRIPT: The city that works
A few days after this letter appeared in the Chicago Tribune, I received the response below from Chicago’s Commissioner of Streets and Sanitation. If Mayor Richard M. Daley commends my action, will I vote for him next election? Hmmm . . . I’m so glad I’m not so jaded that I would think that . . .
December 16, 1998
Dear Ms. Schirf:
I saw your letter to the editor in today’s Chicago Tribune concerning the use of trees as bulletin boards.
As the municipal agency that plants and trims Chicago’s parkway trees, the Department of Streets and Sanitation is very aggressive in enforcing the city ordinance against posting signs on them.
Mayor Richard M. Daley several years ago toughened the law against such signs, allowing us to issue tickets against anyone who benefits from these illegal postings. Previously, it had been necessary to actually catch the person who put up the sign, which was nearly impossible.
Although we also enforce a similar law against signs on light poles, our most urgent concern is signs on trees that are nailed or tacked into the bark since this causes actual damage to the tree’s protective covering.
If you ever again see a sign posted on a parkway tree, I urge you to call my office at (312) 744-4611. I will have an inspector sent out to investigate and, if appropriate, write a ticket.
In the meantime, both Mayor Daley and I commend your strong defense of the benefits trees bring to our urban environment. You have our best wishes.
Date: Friday, November 7, 1997 Source: Diane L. Schirf. Section: COMMENTARY Column: Voice of the people (letter.) Dateline: CHICAGO Copyright CHICAGO TRIBUNE
‘NANNY’ TOO YOUNG
I did not follow the so-called “nanny” trial that closely, although from the summaries I’ve read I do think that the evidence and testimony presented were inconclusive and that there was some reasonable doubt.
That aside, I question the judgment and common sense of the parents. Why did they choose an inexperienced 17-year-old to care for an infant full time? For full-time day care, especially for a baby, I would think parents would want a more mature, experienced person — not a 17-year-old who may not recognize signs of distress in a baby or know how to handle emergencies or other situations and who probably has not at least gone through parenting courses, as most first-time parents do.
I simply would not entrust a baby, who has so many needs, to the care of someone who may not be able to take care of those needs. Yet I suspect this situation is not uncommon. Unfortunately.
Date: Monday, March 13, 1995 Source: Diane L. Schirf, (University of Chicago alumna). Section: PERSPECTIVE Column: Voice of the people (letter). Dateline: CHICAGO Copyright Chicago Tribune
In response to Su Kwan of the University of Chicago, who was disappointed that so many service organizations turned down U. of C. students who offered themselves as volunteers:
I’ve worked as a volunteer for several organizations during the past 15 years. In each case, members of the staff interviewed me, just as if I were applying for a paid position. After I was accepted as a volunteer (in training), I was required to attend several weeks of classes — 60 hours total in one case; 20 in another. Now that I’ve passed muster and am actually performing volunteer services, I still must attend continuing education sessions, as I must for my “real” job.
Like any job, volunteer positions are specialized. Even if you are a bright, enthusiastic U. of C. student, most likely you will not be able to “hit the ground running” in a volunteer capacity any more than you could in your first paying job as a professional. Service organizations also require long-term commitment on your part — sometimes one to two years, or even more. After all, the organization has invested a lot of time and effort in you.
So please don’t knock service organizations for turning down your kindly intended if misguided offer. If you really are interested in becoming dedicated volunteers, go for the interview and attend the training. Then you may appreciate just how much service organizations and the people they serve value their highly trained volunteers and the services they provide.
