The tenement window was the television before there was television. You leaned on the windowsill and you watched the street and the street watched you back. The window was a two-way screen. The woman on the fifth floor knew everything that happened on the block because the window told her. The window was the neighborhood's news desk and the woman leaning out of it was the anchor.

The tenement window had a pillow on the sill. The pillow was important. Without the pillow you got a red mark on your elbows and after an hour your arms went numb. The pillow said you were staying. The pillow said this was not a glance out the window. This was a shift. The pillow turned the window into a post. The woman with the pillow was on duty.

You yelled up to the window and the window yelled back. That was the intercom. You stood on the sidewalk and you yelled a name and the name echoed off the buildings and a head appeared in a window and the conversation started. The whole block heard it. Privacy was not the point. Communication was the point. The tenement window was the first social network and it worked on lung power.

I lived on East Seventh Street and the woman across the airshaft leaned out her window every morning with a cup of coffee and she said good morning to nobody in particular and I said good morning back and that was the relationship. We never met in the hallway. We never knocked on each other's door. We knew each other through the window. The window was enough.

The windows are sealed now. The new buildings have windows that do not open or they open three inches because of the liability. The sealed window is a picture frame. You look through it but you do not lean out of it. You do not yell from it. You do not put a pillow on it and watch the street for an hour. The sealed window turned the neighborhood into a photograph. The tenement window was a conversation. The sealed window is a wall that you can see through.

See also: Walk-Up, Clothesline Pole