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January 21, 2012 in Features
First-class relics
Vintage mailboxes harken to a simpler – and much less expensive – era of delivery
This Cutler Mail Chute Co. mailbox is just inside the main entrance of the Sherwood Building at 510 W. Riverside Ave.
(Full-size photo)(All photos)
The cost to mail a first-class letter increases by a penny Sunday, from 44 cents to 45 cents.
In the early 1900s, it cost 2 cents to mail a letter. Those days are gone forever, but some historic mailboxes are still in use.
Downtown Spokane boasts nearly a dozen, and more are scattered throughout the Inland Northwest in old buildings now used as banks, business complexes and government agencies.
• In the Davenport Hotel lobby, the mailbox has been in place since 1914, when the hotel was built. Look for the original Davenport insignia, three crosses and a shield, at the top of the mailbox. Mail is collected there at 1 p.m.
In the early 20th century, telegrams and long distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive. Letters were a bargain. The Davenport supplied paper and pens on desks in the lobby.
• At the Empire State Building, also known as the Great Western Building, at 901 W. Riverside Ave., letters glide down mail chutes from the floors above into the building’s historic mailbox, just as they have since the building was constructed in 1900.
Due to modern fire codes, and worries about people “mailing” flaming objects, mail chutes in most historic buildings have been sealed shut, even if they have lobby-level historic mailboxes still in use.
Step into the Empire State Building, with its flying letters, and you step back into an era truly near its end.
• The ancient mailboxes in the lobbies of two Riverside Avenue buildings, the Paulsen and the Sherwood, look similar to each other. They were manufactured by the Microsoft of its time, the Cutler Mail Chute Co.
The Rochester, N.Y., company had a monopoly on “receiving boxes,” so named because they received letters via mail chutes in multi-story buildings.
Between 1884 and 1904, Cutler sold 1,600 receiving boxes and connecting chutes throughout the country.
The specifications were exact, according to a National Postal Museum history. Made of metal, the bottom of the mailbox was required to have a cushion to “prevent injury to the mail.”
In this era of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook – technologies that change almost daily – these ancient mailboxes remain solid, stable and open for business.
Starting Sunday, they will provide an injury-free environment for our 45-cent letters, just as they did for the 2-cent letters a century ago.
Don’t forget to jot down names 
Wiggentree_Copyright on January 21 at 8:58 a.m.
This reminds me to wonder whether the historic post office, along with the historic oak post office boxes, in the tiny truck-stop town of Roosevelt, Washington along the Columbia River has vanished with the low-cost of mailing a letter, or will with the other branch closures the USPS plans. It’s located about forty miles or so before you reach Maryhill Museum of Art. I stopped there on my circle tour of Washington east of the Cascades in the Fall of ‘94, and it’s worth seeing as well as Maryhill — both beautiful reminders of days long past.
jdspokanewa on January 21 at 5:08 p.m.
Mail…that’s that box I need to empty into the trash every couple days.
I’d hate to see hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs in this economy because the US Postal Service closes down but I’m almost seeing the future not looking so bright for them, between the obscene law requiring them to fully fund pensions for employees who aren’t even working for the company yet, or aren’t even born and because very little correspondence is done via “snail mail” mail anymore making first-class postage a thing of the past.
About the only thing that mail delivery service is even needed for is mailing important documentations, signature required items and birthday cards with checks from grandma.
Maybe if we get rid of mail delivery, my lawn can grow nicely where the mail lady walks through my lawn every weekday.
polistra on January 21 at 8:20 p.m.
Beautiful!
While you’re at it, can you find any pictures of the ‘Postal Chariots’ that were a unique Spokane phenomenon? I read about them in an Ernie Pyle column from the ‘40s. Horse-drawn mail and milk trucks were fairly common then, but these ‘Chariots’ were apparently unusual enough to justify a story.
catfuzz on January 21 at 10:26 p.m.
It just seems to me like the USPS is putting the nails in their own coffin. 1 penny at a time.