It’s likely that the mail chute, which quickly conveyed letters from the highest stories of ever-growing towers to their lobbies for pick-up, is emblazoned with the eagle insignia and name of the Cutler Mail Chute Company of Rochester, New York.
The first mail chute was installed in the Elwood Building in Rochester in 1884. The experiment was successful and chutes were installed in two New York City office buildings. The first mail chutes were limited to railroad stations and public buildings.
By 1905, the US Postal Service allowed mail chutes to be placed in hotels taller than five stories and in apartment houses with more than 50 residential apartments.
Holding the patents of James Goold Cutler, a Rochester architect and mayor, the Cutler company exercised a virtual monopoly on mail chute production in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, the boom years of high-rise construction…