The chimney cap was a little tin hat on top of the chimney. A cone or a dome or a flat piece of metal with legs that let the smoke out and kept the rain from coming in. The chimney cap was the building's umbrella. One piece of tin between the fire inside and the sky outside. The chimney cap did not ask for credit. The chimney cap just worked.

The chimney cap kept the birds out. Pigeons loved a chimney without a cap. Warm air rising through a brick tube in January and the pigeons found it first. They nested in the flue and the smoke backed up and the apartment filled with the smell of a fire that had nowhere to go. The chimney cap was the building's bouncer. No cap and every pigeon on the block moved in. You put the cap on and the birds went somewhere else and the smoke went where it was supposed to go.

The chimney cap rusted. Tin on a rooftop in New York weather lasted about ten years before the rust ate through. You could tell which buildings had landlords who cared by looking at the chimney caps. A new cap meant somebody was paying attention. A rusted cap with holes meant nobody was home upstairs. The chimney cap was the building's report card and the grade was written in rust.

You climbed to the roof to fix the chimney cap. Four flights and a ladder through the hatch and you were on the roof with the water towers and the pigeons and the sky. The chimney cap was the excuse. The roof was the reward. You fixed the cap in ten minutes and you stayed on the roof for an hour because the roof was the only place in the building where you could see the whole neighborhood at once.

They sealed the chimneys. Bricked them up or capped them with concrete when the building switched to gas heat. The chimney cap sits on top of a chimney that goes nowhere. A hat on a head that stopped thinking. The building used to breathe through the chimney. Now the building breathes through a vent in the wall. The chimney cap is a monument to the time when the building had a relationship with the sky.

See also: Flue, Tin Roof