The chimney pot was the hat on top of the building. Terra cotta. Round or square. Sitting on the chimney stack like a crown on a head that nobody looked at. The chimney pot directed the smoke. The chimney pot kept the rain out. The chimney pot was the last piece of architecture before the sky and nobody on the street ever noticed it.

Every tenement had chimney pots. A row of them along the roofline like soldiers standing at attention. Each pot served a different flue. One for the kitchen stove. One for the parlor fireplace. One for the furnace in the basement. The chimney pots were the exhaust system of the building. Everything that burned inside the building breathed out through the chimney pot.

I used to go up to the roof on East Seventh Street and sit among the chimney pots and play guitar. The chimney pots were warm from the fires below. In winter you could lean against a chimney pot and feel the heat from four floors of living rise through the brick and into your back. The chimney pot was the rooftop radiator. The chimney pot was proof that people lived below.

The chimney pots are still there on the old buildings. Most of them are capped now. Sealed. The furnace is gas or electric and the fireplace is decorative and the kitchen stove plugs into the wall. The chimney pot has nothing left to do. It sits on the roofline like a retired worker. Still dressed for the job. Still showing up. No work to do.

You can see the chimney pots from the street if you look up. Nobody looks up. The city trained you to look straight ahead or down at your phone. The chimney pot is up there waiting for someone to notice. The chimney pot was the building's signature on the sky. Every building signed differently. Now the signatures are sealed and the sky does not know who is writing.

See also: Coal Chute, Cellar Door