Secret Passages to the Past

As part of the fire restorations they have been cleaning and sealing the old light-wells in the building. Once upon a time these shafts let natural light, via frosted windows, into the kitchens, bathrooms, and hallways in the building. The wall in our kitchen where the windows were has long since been replaced, but in most of the apartments (like my old one) the windows are still there, with the glass painted over or replaced with mirrors. Yesterday they were working on the shaft that used to bring light into our kitchen, pantry and bathroom. I spoke to the guy doing the work and he said that he found newspapers from 1946 in one of the shafts. There is a small hole in our kitchen where a fan was mounted, and prior to this work starting I stuck my camera in and took some pictures of the well.

Here I am looking across at the window to our neighbour's kitchen. To the left are the windows that used to feed light to our bathroom and to the right the windows to common hallway, which were removed yesterday and replaced with steel-studs and drywall, . You can also see the dumb-waiter to the left rear that dates back to when the building was a hotel.

Here I am looking across and down toward the downstairs neighbour's kitchen. The box sticking out from the window is the circa-1940's refrigerator that every suite has (ours, the corner of which you can see in the bottom left of the above photo, is mounted in the pantry). They don't work any more and get used as shelves and cupboards by most people - a good place to keep booze.

031206-Correction: Turns out the refidgerators where installed in the 1900's, either when the building was originally constructed or very shortly thereafter. Elaine saw our neighbour removing a manufacturer's tag from one of the fridges that that had been taken out during the "restorations" and the manufacture date was 1905.

I would have liked to have seen what the building was like when these shafts were still open to the light of day. The halls especially would have been great with the big windows letting light in.