30 August 2026
Sunny, 80 degrees
Pfister Lobby Lounge
I’ve shared a lot about the Pfister’s mailboxes and chutes, but I never looked into who made them.
The system was invented in Rochester in 1883 by an architect named James Cutler, built to solve a small but real problem: nobody wants to walk down eight floors just to mail a letter. He founded the Cutler Mail Chute Company to build them. For a while the post office wouldn’t even service them in private buildings. Hotels changed that. By the early 1900s, a mail chute was considered as essential to a grand hotel as its front door.
The Pfister’s has run the height of the building since 1893, and it still works today.
I usually write letters from the mezzanine or the lobby, but dropping a letter in the box on the first floor isn’t quite as satisfying as taking a trip up to the seventh and watching it go down.
Until next time,
Megan