what's this thing in wall of brownstone?
This was covered by a piece of wood and a patch of concrete on the interior brick wall of our brownstone apt. It appears to be made of a thin metal, with a curved interior, and slots leading above and below. It is nearly a foot high, about a foot off the floor, and 3…
This was covered by a piece of wood and a patch of concrete on the interior brick wall of our brownstone apt. It appears to be made of a thin metal, with a curved interior, and slots leading above and below. It is nearly a foot high,
about a foot off the floor, and 3 feet from the fireplace.
Any idea what it was for? In case this matters, it’s on the third floor of a Brooklyn brownstone built in the 1870’s.
Thanks!
Yes — although its not in the picture, right next to this duct thing is clearly one of those laborer doorways. Not crawling size but a full height thing that looks like it was hastily filled in with bricks after the rest of the walls etc were all built. There is a similar ‘doorway’ in the brick wall parallel to this one, so they could get through to 3 buildings, and I suspect something similar provided access to at least some of the others on the block.
funny, b/c I hear a story that when most of the b’stones were being built at once, that the laborers would create small “crawl spaces” to get from on struture to the other more easily. makes sense if you think about it.
Stashbox.
Looks like a heating duct. As others have noted, a lot of these places had ducted heat installed at some point, then the radiator heat system later. The heating progression generally went, fireplaces, then the ducted heat, then raditators, I think …
It certainly looks like a heating duct. From the pic it also looks like the louvers are still in place. The original coal systems would use these and some home owners used the exsisting ducts for a forced hot air system.
If you can remove the louvers some of them are dated. The ones I removed and refinished from my house were stamped 1872.
(OP): I think its too small to be a dumbwaiter since its only the depth of the brick wall. A hot air duct seems reasonable – what era would such a thing have been used?
Now that we have removed the ugly patch of concrete that had been smeared over this thing, is there any problem with us leaving it uncovered (e.g., putting something decorative there?)Any suggestions for what to do with it?
dumbwaiter?
It’s a rabbit hole. Is your name Alice?
I think it might be a hot air duct, assuming that your original heating system was replaced at some point by a system using radiators.