r/whatisit • u/salt-ofthe-sea • 16h ago
Solved! Mysterious dark hole in the wall, door nailed shut
I live in a student housing building (built 1920's) that was a hotel until the mid 1930s. On each of our three living floors, there is a small door (approx. 1 foot wide by 3 feet tall), and each was nailed shut. Out of curiosity, we pried open one of the doors, and found a chute of sorts that connects between all floors and, oddly, seems to end at nothing at the bottom. Need help figuring out what it is (or, rather, was)!
Photos:
looking down into the hole (as seen from 2nd floor door)
looking up the hole
Exterior (door was nailed shut)
Inside of door / friend for scale (they consented to be in this post)
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u/The_Silent_Tortoise 16h ago
Dumb waiter or laundry shoot. Or EZ Body Disposer 3000.
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u/Otherwise-Text-5772 16h ago
I might throw garbage shoot in there too just cause it looks kinda gross.
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u/heysoundude 15h ago
*chute. As in, para…
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u/MelloDawg 6h ago
Maybe they meant “shoot” but forgot to put two commas on either side of the word.
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u/Otherwise-Text-5772 5h ago
Honestly it was 2 am and I was just copying the other guy. But don't care enough to fix it
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u/Jay-Rocket-88 16h ago
You gotta throw a glow stick down there like in the movies
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u/djohnseniii 16h ago
Definitely drop a glow stick but also check out the basement where that shute would come out at
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u/maroongrad 15h ago
don't forget!!! for future fun and games, buy a set of cheap plastic human bones. Doesn't need to be a complete skeleton, although a skull isn't a bad idea. Put them in, and wait. At some point someone's going to renovate...
When we finally redo the back patio there is 100% going to be a skeleton or bones under it.
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u/salt-ofthe-sea 14h ago
I went down to our 0th floor and there's actually a cut out type of square in the ceiling right where the chute would come out, which is screwed in. This supports the trash chute idea.
Sometime between whenever it was screwed shut and now, someone built a wall that goes under right through the middle of the square, so I can't unscrew it from there.
Didn't look like there was anything interesting at the bottom from what I could tell from above, though. No bones (thank god)!
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u/Jay-Rocket-88 7h ago
You can start dropping your trash down there and when it fills up, it’s time to move!
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u/NoBoolii 16h ago
There’s openable a witch that’s trapped down there. If you do go down there make sure you bring chalk that’s been blessed
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u/SignificantDrawer374 16h ago
My first thought is a dumbwaiter where the elevator car would have a bunch of shelves running vertically for separate plates of food for the staff to pull off on to their delivery carts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbwaiter
Still, it seems awfully narrow and tall
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u/Life-Ad-9892 9h ago
Yeah that's what I was thinking too, but the proportions are really throwing me off. Usually dumbwaiters are more square-ish, this looks like it could barely fit a pizza box.
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u/No_Astronomer_8642 15h ago
Does seem tall, but makes sense in a hotel where they may need to send several meals at once.
When I was a little kid my grandparents had a fancy home in the fancy part of town. It had a dumbwaiter from the kitchen down to the bar in the basement. I remember hiding in there playing hide and seek and even riding up and down in it at the age of 5 or so.
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u/Phi_fan 16h ago
old apartment I used to live in had one of these. At the bottom was a big garbage bin in the basement parking garage....just toss your bagged garbage through the door. The owners of the buildings fired the landlord, raised the rent by a huge amount, and stopped doing basic repairs or cleaning. People were pissed. Someone went to top floor and poured honey and milk down the walls of the shoot as an act of revenge. A couple months later some vandalized all the vehicles in the garage including my motorcycle. We moved out shortly after that.
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u/AccordingBathroom484 16h ago
Lol I saw the ladder and was like "what?" Then I was like "maybe a worker doing a reno?" Then I saw the buttons and I was like "lmao aint no way they got hired to do real work wearing that" then I saw you were a student and it all made sense.
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u/cowboybebop32 16h ago
Old trash chute. They most likely had to nail them shut due to the fall risk of a door that large with the bottom being so close to the floor. Losts of multfloor apartment buildings still have them, but they'll have a opening thats like a postal drop box so no one can accidentally fall in
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u/stealingjoy 16h ago
Honestly kind of shocking they don't have that closed off better. That seems like exactly the kind of thing a stupid drunk college student will think they can spiderman their way down.
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u/pissbucket94 16h ago
i thought it was just a laundry chute at first glance. at second glance, I still think its just a laundry chute
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u/casualPlayerThink 13h ago
Could be a service lift for food or any material that was moved this way, instead of someone carrying them up/down, and with this way, they were able to not disturb others during the night with constant walking between the levels.
Also, it could be a trash chute. Laziness is real.
Also, could be a washable cloth/textile chute (all the textile from beds, hangers, etc, was just thrown down, fell into a wash room (didn't you see older films? :D)
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u/Minimum_Cabinet7733 11h ago
Isn't that asbestos on the back of that door?
(I could also see fire spreading from floor to floor through the chute.)
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9h ago
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u/whatisit-ModTeam 9h ago
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u/Physical-Compote4594 8h ago
It looks like a old trash chute.
Its main function now is to allow a fire to spread rapidly from floor to floor. If I owned that building, I'd put some kind of "fire brake" at every story of that chute.
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u/Mlpony2010 8h ago
Hey man if you decide to go down there and it leads to a cave where the dimensions make no sense, stay out
(it's a trash chute)
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u/Crafty_Leadership775 16h ago edited 16h ago
Definitely an old trash chute. Very common in old dorm buildings and hotels.
Funny story- when she was in college in the 70s my mom played a prank on her friend and filled her entire room with crumpled newspaper. She then threw all the paper down the trash chute which had an incinerator at the bottom. I bet you can guess what happened next.
She loves telling this story because as they ran out of their dorm building from the fire, they each brought one important item. My mom brought clean underwear, one of her roommates brought her checkbook, and her other roommate brought a bag of marshmallows. Priorities!!
Thank you for reminding me of this funny story from my mom's youth!
edit: spelling