Old lobby mailboxes reflect beauty of classic Minneapolis skyscrapers

Culture

Old lobby mailboxes reflect beauty of classic Minneapolis skyscrapers The sturdy metal boxes were objects of beauty and functionality as a mail delivery system in tall buildings.

The Minnesota Star Tribune November 14, 2024 at 1:00PMThe mailbox in the lobby of the Rand Tower in downtown Minneapolis. (James Lileks) Email doesn't exist. You have an inbox, except you don't; there's no lid to lift to see if the mail has arrived. And, you don't send an email by shoving it through a slot. Email is functional, frictionless, instantaneous and much easier than physical mail. What it lacks most is what it needs the least: beauty.

Well, what did beauty have to do with the old mail? A lot. There's a simple practical beauty in the old blue mailboxes that stood on the street, looking patient and self-contained, but they lacked adornment.

To find beauty in the simple act of posting a letter, you head downtown to an old building, wander over to the elevator bank, and look for a Cutler mailbox. You can't miss it: There's a glass chute attached, rising into the mysteries of the floors above.

The sturdy boxes, usually a few feet across, had designs often tailored to the style of the building. The Medical Arts Building (825 Nicollet Mall) had the popular Skyscraper Gothic style, and the mailbox matched it.

The mailbox in the lobby of the Medical Arts building at 825 Nicollet Mall. (James Lileks) Minneapolis's finest late 1920s structures have lovely examples. The mailbox for the Foshay Tower (821 Marquette Av. S.) is obscured behind the check-in counter, looking like a disused relic. The style is pure art deco, with all the stylized floral designs found elsewhere in the lobby.

The mailbox in the lobby of the Foshay Tower. (James Lileks) The Rand Tower's interiors are more refined and stripped down, and the large mailbox looks like a door that opens up into the Jazz Age.

The Rand Tower box appears to have hooks at the bottom to hold the mail bag in place while the mail is shoveled out. (James Lileks) You might think the Baker Building (now the 706 Building in Baker Center, 7th Street and 2nd Avenue S.) had a lot of doctors, since the box has staff-and-snakes caduceus we associate with the medical profession. Actually, no. The staff was the symbol of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, so it was a fine fit for the mail as well.

The mailbox in the lobby of the Baker Building. (James Lileks) Every mailbox, and the chutes that fed them, bore the name of the patent holder: Cutler Manufacturing Co., a Rochester, N.Y.-based firm founded by James G. Cutler, who was an architect who later became the city's mayor. The company catalog for 1917 relates its history. The mail chute was introduced in 1883, just in time for the skyscraper boom. In 1884, the company installed four chutes. Nineteen years later, around 1,600 were in use. In 1917, the company asserted, "there is no office building or hotel of any consequence in the United States which is not equipped with this modern convenience."

The National Fire Protection Association issued new codes in 1997 that banned chutes because smoke could climb up through tunnels. The codes were voluntary, but influential. While thousands remain in use across the country, the decline of physical mail and the effect on work-from-home on office tenancy means that the sight of a letter fluttering down the chute will be as rare as a falling star.

But even if the letter goes the way of the telegram, the boxes will still remain in many lobbies. No longer a portal to the outside world, but a grave marker.

about the writer James Lileks James Lileks is a Star Tribune columnist.

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