The dumbwaiter was a box on a rope inside a wall. You opened a little door in the kitchen and there was a wooden box and you put something in it and pulled the rope and the box went up or down to another floor. The dumbwaiter connected every apartment in the building without anyone leaving their kitchen. You could send food. You could send mail. You could send a message written on a piece of paper bag. The dumbwaiter was the elevator of the poor. No electricity. No buttons. Just a rope and a box and trust.

Every tenement had one. The shaft ran from the basement to the top floor and every kitchen had a door to it. The door was about two feet square and when you opened it you could hear every conversation in the building because the shaft was a chimney for sound. The dumbwaiter was the intercom before the intercom. You yelled into the shaft and three floors heard you. Secrets did not survive the dumbwaiter. The dumbwaiter knew everything.

My grandmother sent food down the dumbwaiter to Mrs. Feldman on the second floor because Mrs. Feldman was sick and could not cook. Every Tuesday. A pot of soup. The pot went down and the empty pot came back up the next day. The dumbwaiter turned the building into a family. You did not have to see someone to feed them. You just opened the little door and lowered the rope and the building took care of itself.

The dumbwaiter shaft was also the garbage chute in buildings where the super did not care. People threw garbage down the shaft and the garbage piled up in the basement and the rats found the garbage and the rats found the shaft and the rats used the dumbwaiter better than the tenants did. The rat could climb the rope. The rat did not need to pull. The dumbwaiter was the highway of the rats and the rats never paid rent.

Nobody uses the dumbwaiter anymore. The shafts are sealed. The little doors are painted over or covered with cabinets. The rope rotted years ago. But the shaft is still there inside the wall. If you knocked on the right spot in a prewar kitchen you would hear the hollow sound of a passage that used to carry soup and secrets and rats and the voice of your neighbor three floors down telling you dinner was ready. The building remembers. The kitchen wall is thinner than you think.

See also: Tenement Roof, Iron Gate