Shadows of a Forgotten World

An intersting architectural/infrastructural element of the old buildings in Lviv is the vault window with a metal shutter. Even these seemingly unimportant, mundane covers were finished off with an artistic and decorative touch - a unique cutout, which I assume served the purpose of providing some light and ventilation into the basement vaults.  The windows would open by key from the outside, and likely were also used as chutes to bring goods or coal directly into the basements from the streets. As these are generally found on the front facade of the buildings, many have been openings to the vaults of storefronts - and so storage of goods was very important.  Now many of these shutters have been painted over and left unused for decades. The key holes have been painted shut and the keys long gone, while the vaults themselves may have been left abandoned, undisturbed... Each one has a different design - and there are hundreds of these around Lviv.  My favorit...

Lviv, like most cities in the nineteenth century, needed chimney sweeps to keep chimneys clean from the soot that accumulated from burning coal. The bas-relief of a chimney sweep on Anhelovycha Street is one of the only reminders of the era of chimney sweeps . At the beginning of the twentieth century, the owner of the building which has the sign was a master in chimney cleaning.  Several years ago, the restaurant Dim Lehend (House of Legends) installed a statue of a chimney sweep on the building's chimney. A wonderful song about a chimney sweep by the band the Decemberists                                                            "The Chimbley Sweep" I am a chimbley, a chimbley sweep No bed to lie, no shoes to hold my feet Upon the rooftops in dead of night You'll hear me cry, I'll shake you from your sleep...

Traces of Stanisławów's prewar and Polish past: Polish-language street sign conscription number company from Lviv bootscraper bootscraper tracks for transporting coal

Another remnant of the coal infrastructure is the manually operated freight elevator. Coal would have been transported into the courtyards of buildings along tracks located in the entrance ways. Then from the courtyard, the coal would have been hoisted up to each floor on an elevator. This would have been more convenient than carrying the coal up the stairs, and also would have kept the stairwells clean from coal dust. The guide rails from the elevators remain in many courtyards, but I have only found one place where much of the winch and pulley mechanism is still in its original place next to the guide rails. In this case, there were elevators on either side of the courtyard. Guide rails remain in several courtyards. This winch is located outside an antique store in Lviv's center. It was obviously placed there as an advertising tool and is not in its original location.

Some traces of the infrastructure for transporting and using coal still remain in Lviv. One such remnant is wagon tracks that carried coal through a building's carriage entrance to the courtyard. In some courtyards there would have been elevators to lift the coal to upper levels. 

In downtown Winnetka, I found a well-preserved coal chute – the building and chute date to the early 20th century, probably between 1900 and 1930. This is an excerpt I found about the chutes manufactured by the Majestic Company: “The Majestic Coal Chutes are made of carefully selected materials. In form they are fitted for the unloading of coal. Fuel can be thrown into the building through these chutes without any damage resulting to the building. When the door of the Majestic Chute is opened it affords an ideal opening for the admittance of fuel into a building. These chutes can be unlocked from the inside. They are locked automatically with the Majestic Gravity Latch,” from the journal The American Artisan and Hardware Record : 1920, Volume 79. The company was founded in 1907 in Huntington, Indiana, and in 1957 it started to phase out coal chutes, as other sources of energy were becoming more common.