What is a Safety Coal Manhole Cover?

D107

Found a reference on the net to a manhole cover manufacturer Dreier Safety Coal Hole Cover Co. on a Lower East Side street in the early 1920s. Was this for coal for district steam heating?

mattmia2

Probably a coal bin for a building that was filled from the street that might be in a basement or in a vault under the street/sidewalk.

I'm guessing the safety cover meant it was round.

bburd

Those covers can still be seen on the sidewalks in parts of New York City, and in the Victorian neighborhoods of Boston.

Mad Dog_2

Plenty of coal chutes visible in basements in the city  mad Dog 🐕 

D107

This antique Coal hole cover is from the Dreier Iron Foundry for structural steel at 35 Goerck Street,Manhattan,NYC. Goerck St. history is such that it was on the lower East side and known as the most famous of streets known for having tenements on it.It also does not exist any more as they leveled it to be low income housing. The lid is in good overall pre- owned shape and measures 21" in diameter with coal hole opening measures 15"x 16.5". A coal hole cover/lid was usually placed on the sidewalk in front of a business or residence around the mid to late 1800's into the early 1900s. Their job was to protect the coal bunker that was situated below the sidewalk. Rather then having the coal delivery person bring the messy coal through the building, they would just simply lift the lid and dump it right directly into the basement bunker. As the demand for coal became limited around the 1920's so did the demand for coal hole covers, and eventually they stopped producing them all together. The ones that are left that survived are a very rare group.They can be used as architectural pieces in antique settings as well as gardens etc. as a piece of history.

Mad Dog_2

I was gonna Say...never been down Goerk Street.  Mad Dog 🐕 

Mad Dog_2

Great NYC History Lesson D!  Read up on the Short Tails Gang who were Violent  Teenage Mutant Rebels constantly in search of Beer 🍺!  That block was straight out of Jacob Riis' Classic "How the other half lives."  And Gangs of NY...My Grandmother Ethel came up in slightly better housing in Brooklyn.  Mad Dog 🐕 

mattmia2

I don't see how you would have used something like that until the streets were paved.

D107

@mattmia2 Yes hard to imagine any paving going on in the mid-1800s...I wonder if streets and sidewalks came along together at the same time or if one preceded the other. These covers seem to have been placed in the sidewalk area, and perhaps before it was paved they could have built a square cement form to hold the cover and stuck a lining in to direct the coal. @Mad Dog_2 Yes great stories of that beer-addicted gang. My father lived on Goerck as a kid; his HVAC career may have been partially inspired by all the workers he observed on the block. He also spoke of some buildings with horses on the rooftop walking around in circles to raise the elevators. (No elevators likely in those Goerck cold water tenements.)

pecmsg

mattmia2 said:

I don't see how you would have used something like that until the streets were paved.

Cobble Stones?

ChrisJ

I think that depends on what you mean by paving.

I'd guess that Manhattan had cobblestone roads etc going back to the 1700s in some areas. We're talking about Manhattan, not Hooterville.

D107

mattmia2

I bet Manhattan in the 1890's looked a lot more like hooterville than anything you'd think of a city looking like.

Mad Dog_2

Oh Yeah...."Collect Pond"  & Minetta Brook were early water sources for the "Farmers" of Lower Manhattan. They polluted the H----  outta them.  Minetta spring can still be seen in a sub basement of a building down there.  I've always been fascinated with Freshwater, ponds, springs, turtles 🐢 frofs fish ecosystem et cetera.  

As an Apprentice my shop had all the lucrative contracts and service for Radio City, Rockettes, The Rainbow Room Letterman Show, Bryant Humber had a 10K hand painted  gold trimmed Lavatory sink in his bathroom, Patricks Cathedral, All of Rockefeller Center, Time Life Buildings.  In those sub-basements were pristine underground streams and springs that were routed through 24" & 36" Vitrified Clay sewers. The water was tested.  Catskill Mountain Qaulity! We even drank some!  

Matt Jr. On his Manhattan College Radio Program interviewed Sergey Kadinksy, author of a fantastic book, called "Hidden Waters" which documented all the natural springs, streams,, lakes,.ponds & fresh water sources in New Yorks 5 Boros.  He literally crawled through tunnels, storm sewers, Impenetrable brush and found remnants and still flowing sources.  

If you're in to this sort of thing, it's an amazing resource and historical record about New York City Water.  Being an outdoors' lunatic, I often seek these places out and fish 🐟 them.  People passing by are always astonished what I pull out of these spots.  I always encourage everyone to get fishing, especially kids..."Take a kid fishing 🎣 and you'll never "fish" for the kid..."  Mad Dog 🐕 

Mad Dog_2

ChrisJ

mattmia2 said:

I bet Manhattan in the 1890's looked a lot more like hooterville than anything you'd think of a city looking like.

Well.....

1860s. And those are cobblestone roads and concrete sidewalks.




1910


1912



Sure, very rural looking.......

ChrisJ

With all of those sidewalks etc, it's very easy to see where some nice cast iron coal manhole covers would fit right in.

Mad Dog_2

Up until the Early 1800s, Brooklyn & Queens had World Famous Trout streams...enclosed them in pipes and just filled some in!  Mad Dog 🐕 

EdTheHeaterMan

I wonder how Hooterville got its name?


I can only imagine from this picture

ChrisJ

EdTheHeaterMan said:

I wonder how Hooterville got its name?


I can only imagine from this picture

Hoosterville.

They lived at the Shady Rest, I don't think that was in Hooterville was it? It wasn't in Pixley either.....

Got it....

In one episode, it is revealed that the Shady Rest was built right on the county line between Hooterville county and Pixley county. The situation is solved when the Hooterville Cannonball tows the hotel several feet until it is fully within the Hooterville boundary.

CLamb

EdTheHeaterMan said:

I wonder how Hooterville got its name?

From Wikipedia: In this series, the town is said to be named after Horace Hooter, who founded the town in 1868. According to Green Acres, Hooterville is in "the kangaroo state".

Mad Dog_2

The Fambly Horse Farm 🚜 in Saratoga had a huge sow 🐖 pig named Arnold..Mad Dog 🐕