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We toilers and spinners at the Daily Journal of Commerce scurry about every workday with our fellow denizens of the Pittock Block, passing by ornate metal mail chutes on every floor.

Am I the only one who thinks about James Goold Cutler? I hope not. This was a man whose death inspired a eulogy by President William Howard Taft. I would hate to think he is remembered now by only a handful of history geeks, including one especially geeky newspaper reporter in Portland.

Cutler deserves better. Think of him when you enter an old building and see one of those metal mail chutes. It was a work of particular genius in 1883. High-rise office buildings were just beginning to sprout in American cities.

Back then, if you were a success, the last thing you wanted was the corner office on the top floor.

Those were the nosebleed seats. You wanted the ground floor. Let lesser men climb the stairs.

That changed with the advent of the elevator. 鈥淟ifts鈥� were becoming more and more common in the 1880s, especially in 1887 when Alexander Miles of Duluth, Minn., perfected an elevator with automatic doors to close off the elevator shaft.

Miles enabled the Pittock Block, built in 1913, to be the largest office building in Portland. (It has since slipped to No. 14.)

However, even if you scaled the Olympian heights to the eighth floor, you still wanted a convenient way to send and receive office mail (the stuff we used to get before email) without wearing out your shoe leather or expending your human resources (or 鈥渢oadies鈥�).

Enter James Goold Cutler of Rochester, N.Y. He was an architect by trade when he came up with the mail chute he patented in 1884. Patent No. 284,951 was cool in the days before the corporate 鈥渕ail room.鈥�

The patent states that the mail chute must 鈥渂e of metal, distinctly marked 鈥楿.S. Letter Box.鈥� 鈥� In addition, the 鈥渄oor must open on hinges on one side, with the bottom of the door not less than 2 feet, 6 inches above the floor.鈥� If the building was more than two stories, the collection box was to be outfitted with a cushion (often a web of rubber bands) to prevent the mail from being damaged.

The mail chute also had to be accessible along its entire length so that any mail that got stuck could be dislodged.

Cutler鈥檚 first mail chute was installed in New York City鈥檚 Elwood Building. The Cutler Mail Box Co. eventually produced more than 1,600 chutes in buildings over the next 20 years. Cutler was a rich man. The New York Times reported his company was worth a whopping $2 million. He got even richer when federal postal officials allowed Cutler mail chutes to be placed in hotels taller than five stories and public apartment buildings with more than 50 units.

The system was not flawless. Legend has it that 40,000 pieces of mail got stuck in the 50-story McGraw-Hill Building in New York.

Cutler鈥檚 mail rival was the Automatic Mail Delivery Company of New York City. However, that rivalry ended when the two companies merged. It was as if Cutler owned the entire color block 鈥� Atlantic and Ventnor avenues as well as Marvin Gardens.

鈥淭his merges practically all the mail chute companies in the market,鈥� The New York Times reported in 1909. Of course, cornering mail chute business would prove as profitable as cornering the house-and-buggy industry.

Mail chutes inevitably gave way to mail rooms and mail rooms to the Internet.

In 1997, the National Fire Protection Association banned mail chutes in new construction. Nonetheless, Cutler mail chutes are still actively used in some 900 buildings in Manhattan 鈥� including the Empire State Building.

As for Cutler himself, he was a Republican presidential elector for New York state in 1896 and served as mayor of Rochester from 1904 to 1907. He died in 1927. His company鈥檚 products soon become little more than ghosts in the hallway.

Still, they are lovely ghosts.

Look sometime at the detailing on the old metal chutes. They reflect an era when aesthetics were important, even on something as utilitarian as a place to drop mail. The act of dropping a letter down a metal mail chute seems charming, even romantic, these days.

Then again, so does sending a piece of paper through the mail.

鈥淏uilding Curiosity,鈥漺hich runs on the first and third Wednesday of each month, investigates intriguing, historical and obscure tidbits of the built environment. Tom Henderson is a reporter for the Daily Journal of Commerce. Contact him at 503-802-7226 or [email protected].