The cellar door was a pair of metal doors set into the sidewalk at an angle. You walked over them every day and you did not think about what was underneath. The cellar door was the trapdoor of the city. Under every sidewalk was another room. A basement. A storage space. A coal bin. A world that lived below the street and breathed through those metal doors. The cellar door was the city's secret entrance.

The doors were cast iron. Diamond pattern. Two halves that opened outward like wings. When the delivery man came he opened the doors and lowered the goods into the basement. Barrels of beer. Sacks of flour. Blocks of ice. Cases of bottles. The cellar door was the loading dock of the small business. Everything that came into the store came through the sidewalk. The sidewalk worked for the building below it.

I used to sit on the cellar doors on Second Avenue and play guitar. The metal was warm in summer and cold in winter and the sound of the guitar bounced off the iron and came back with a ring. The cellar door was the best amplifier on the block. Better than a speaker. Better than a wall. The cellar door gave the music a metallic edge that made it sound like the city. Everything in the city sounds a little like iron.

The cellar door was dangerous. The hinges rusted. The metal warped. A cellar door that was not maintained was a trap. You walked over it and it gave way and you fell into a basement that had not seen daylight in twenty years. The city inspector came around and checked the doors and if the doors were bad the inspector left a notice and if the notice was ignored the inspector came back and left a fine and if the fine was ignored nothing happened because the city had bigger problems than a cellar door on Second Avenue.

The cellar doors are disappearing. The new buildings do not have them. The new buildings get deliveries through the front door or the parking garage. The cellar door was a handshake between the building and the sidewalk. The sidewalk said I will cover your basement if you keep the doors in order. The building said I will keep the doors in order if you let the delivery man through. That deal is over. The sidewalk belongs to the pedestrian now. The pedestrian does not know what is underneath. The cellar door knew. The cellar door was the one piece of the building that admitted there was something below.

See also: Coal Chute, Dumbwaiter