Remnants of old manually operated coal elevators remain tucked away in a some of Lviv’s courtyards. These artifacts date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — a time when coal was widely used for domestic heating. At that time, coal would have been delivered to the courtyards of […]
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An interesting architectural and infrastructural element of the old buildings in Lviv is the vault window with a metal shutter. Even these seemingly unimportant, mundane covers were finished off with an artistic and decorative touch—a unique cutout, which I assume served the purpose of providing some light and ventilation in […]
Lviv, like most cities in the nineteenth century, needed chimney sweeps to keep chimneys clean from the soot that accumulated from burning coal. The bas-relief of a chimney sweep on Anhelovycha Street is one of the only reminders of the era of chimney sweeps. At the beginning of the twentieth […]
Some traces of the infrastructure for transporting and using coal still remain in Lviv. One such remnant is wagon tracks that carried coal through a building’s carriage entrance to the courtyard. In some courtyards there would have been elevators to lift the coal to upper levels. This was a much […]
In downtown Winnetka, I found a well-preserved coal chute. The building and chute date to the early twentieth century, probably between 1900 and 1930. The Majestic Company was founded in 1907 in Huntington, Indiana. It manufactured coal chutes, garbage receivers, package receivers, and fireplace dampers. Here is is an original […]
