Air mail

Bob Handelman

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When we showed you the renovated Linonia & Brothers Reading Room in our last issue (“Old Friend,” September/October), we mentioned the pneumatic tube station that had been reinstalled in the space. Here’s a closer look. The metal tubes inside the wooden cabinet were for sending or receiving call slips and other messages in cylindrical carriers to one of nine other stations in Sterling Memorial Library. The tube system was decommissioned long ago, but the cabinet was brought out of storage as a memorial to the state-of-the-art technology of 1931.