At last week’s press preview for the Friends of Duane Park‘s Inside Tribeca Loft Tour, I learned something new. While we were visiting Marpillero Pollak Architects‘ astounding live/work space on Duane (look for pix tomorrow), Linda Pollak explained that what you see in the above photo (and all around Tribeca) is an old coal chute—since filled in—through which coal was delivered to buildings. The channel etched around the edge is so that water would rain to the curb and not into the chute. As the old granite sidewalks get replaced by concrete ones, the evidence of the chutes is disappearing.

UPDATE 10/7: Linda sent over a link to a Q&A she did about the chute covers with Urban Omnibus. It’s so cool to see a bunch in a grid.