Pneumatic Mail

I am at present trying to collect information about the postal system from my City Elgin IL. In may searches around I came about some covers available from Elgin involving cancels of/ involving the pneumatic mail system. Can anyone tell me where it came from or went to from Elgin. I also found a neet picture of some equipment in a post office somewhere in america.

st office somewhere.

First, the picture was from the New York tube system.
I don't know of any official post office pneumatic system in Elgin. There were 6 pneumatic tube systems built for the Post Office Department; New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis and Brooklyn. Additionally the POD approved but did not construct for Pittburgh, Cleveland, San Francisco, Detroit, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

The Chicago system would have sent mail received for Elgin from the train depots to the closest PO Station via the tubes. The Chicago tube system was approved in 1900 and went into operation on Aug 24, 1904. The system was initially 8.78 miles of tubes as follows:
General Post Office to Illinois Central Railroad Depot 1.080 miles
Illinois Central Railroad Depot to 22nd Street Station 1.193 miles
22nd Street Station to Armour Station 1.023 miles
Armour Station to Halstead Station 1.363 miles
Halstead Station to Stock Yards 1.439 miles
General Post Office to Board of Trade .881 miles
Board of Trade to Union Depot (Station U) .720 miles
General Post Office to South Water Street .781 miles
South Water Street to Chicago & North Western Railroad Depot .300 miles

By 1915 the system had expanded to 9 Stations and 10.0447 milesd of tubes and would eventually have 19.814 miles of tubes.
Congress evaluated the tube system in all 6 cities and monitored tube usage on Aug 19-20, 1915. Chicago handled 10,557,349 pieces of mail in those 24 hours with 7,075,441 utilizing the tubes for 67%.

Chicago was the only city to use a special pneumatic tube cancel. The tube system was suspended fron 1918 to 1922 and discontinued on Dec 31, 1953.

Here's a good history about its use (from USPS web site):

http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/_...ubes2-09.pdf

So, can we call this "air mail"?

That is some good info Russ. I'd love to see some covers from the Windy City!

Russ
Very interesting. Thank You.

N. Western Tube Sta, (Chicago & North Western Railroad Depot)

Thanks so much for the info.

In looking back at those covers the cancels were by pneumatic machine not pneumatic mail. But in retrospect I believe the Pneumatic mail system and its history is more enjoyable.

I used to go through the Northwestern station a long time ago before they tore it down for a more modern building. In fact they wrecked a lot of odd little stations in downtown Chicago about 20 to 40 years ago about the time all the railroads were consolidating.

Did major mailers (such as Montgomery Wards in Chicago) have their own private networks linked straight to the Post office or was it just to shipping points?

I remember riding the old C&NW years back before it was the Metra. Speaking of Elgin, I used to love a little place for mexican food there called La Taqueria Tremenda, or something like that....might have been in South Elgin.

It was on the south side of Elgin near the SE border. Unfortunately changed hands recently and is called something else now. Was in the building that had the Burns drugstore - Burns had killer chocolate malts - The place "AL's Cafe" still has the original recipe for it. There is a lot of small Hispanic places around town with good food.

You never collect stamps by themselves, you always collect the memories with them.