Locations - New York state

AMSTERDAM. Lurie's department store. Pneumatic tubes. Bob Cudmore website

BUFFALO. Adam, Meldrum and Anderson. "He was fascinated by the elaborate system of pneumatic tubes at Adam, Meldrum and Anderson, which whisked money and sales slips for each transaction away to the cashier and just as quickly brought change back to the appropriate counter." Sarah Elvins. Sales and celebrations: retailing and regional identity in Western New York State, 1920-1940. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2004. p.7

BUFFALO. Hens & Kelly Inc. Lamson pneumatic tube system. Lamson brochure, 1952

BUFFALO. Weed & Co., Genesee Building. Pneumatic tube system. Building is now Hyatt hotel. Preservation Coalition of Erie County Newsletter, Summer 1992

CENTERBORO. Busy Bee (dry goods store), Center/Main Streets. "An interesting feature of the Bee was the system of pneumatic tubes which connected the register stations to the main office on the third floor." Mr Eha's Place

CORNING. Rockwell (dept. store). "Visitors to the Rockwell department store recall a tube system that would transport a cylindrical-like module containing the purchase slip to the business office; then, when that office had recorded the sale, etc., the system would return the module with sales receipt enclosed to the customer. Actually, that tube system was an improvement over a similar but earlier system that Bob put into operation when he first arrived. At that time, he recalls, 'There was a cord or rope as big as your finger that went along on pulleys and you could see the darn thing going like a mouse. We had a machine that kep the thing running.' It was 'during the war', he explains, 'after I had been here about ten years that we installed this other tube system.'" Mary Elizabeth Wahlig. For real: Bob Rockwell, the man and his collection. Xlibris, 2002, p.100

DUNKIRK. Safe Store. Pneumatic tube system in 1966. "Half the fun was sticking your arms and hands into the tubes to feel the suction... Sometimes an article of clothing got sucked into the tubes .. and on occasion I almost got sucked into those tubes too." Dunkirk High School Yearbooks website

EAST HAMPTON. Gregory's dept. store, Main Street. "Was once a thriving establishment - the largest in the village. Inside, toward the rear, the cashier had an elevated station. Payments made to the sales clerks were inserted in a cup, which was then sent to her by an intricate system of overhead wiring. Much to the fascination of both young and old customers, change and receipts were whizzed back to the clerk in the same manner." East Hampton Star, 15 Jan. 1998

FRANKLINVILLE. Chandler Bros & Farwell. "He [Farwell] had .. a cash carrier (the office was on a second floor balcony which overlooked the store." RootsWeb website

GLOVERSVILLE. Argersingers dept. store, Middle Street. "Remember the overhead conveyor that sent your money upstairs to the office and returned your change?.. Argersinger's store is today an office complex." Lewis G.Decker, Gloversville. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 1998, p.47

GOWANDA. Himeleins clothing store. Cash basket system. Shop was in business in 1970s. Posting to comp.dcom.telecom, 23 Apr. 2003

JAMESTOWN. Bigelows dept store. "Bigelow's was unique among Jamestown businesses as it had a pneumatic cash tube system which fed all sales slips and money into a central cash cage on the mezzinane[sic]. Here cashiers would sort out cash and change sales, file slips, and send change back to the sales counters. This system had been installed when the store was built in 1906, and it remained operational well into the 1970s." Bigelow Family website

JAMESTOWN. Noah's Ark hardware store. "Only Noah's Ark, a hardware store in Brooklyn Square, used anything of similar antiquity: a cash basket system carried overhead by pulleys." Bigelow Family website

LOCKPORT. Williams Brothers, Main Street. Pneumatic tubes. Lockport website

NEW YORK. Abraham and Straus (dept store), Fulton Street, Brooklyn. Cable system. The reconstruction at Disneyland Paris was based on this. In the late 1960s a pneumatic tube system was being used. Posting to alt.movies.silent, 7 Apr. 2004 and Lamson brochure, 1952

NEW YORK. B. Altman & Co. Fifth Avenue & Madison Avenue. The new addition in 1914(?) included extension of the pneumatic tube service so that there were 16 miles of brass tubing. New York Public Library website and Lamson brochure, 1952

NEW YORK. B & H (camera shop), 9th Avenue and 34th Street. Not really a cash railway but a basket system. "There is a chain-driven series of baskets that circle the store in a complicated route - way up in the air above everybody. When you purchase something the clerk writes it up and puts the item (or just the invoice) into a basket - and it goes up to a cashier's desk near the front of the store, where it waits for you to finish shopping. You get a 'claim check' kind of thing to hang on to. When you've all done shopping, you take your claim check(s) up front and they retrieve your items, then pay for them, then you get them. Very efficient, but pretty wierd." Photo.net bulletin board and New York Pass website

NEW YORK. Fourteenth Street store. "Crowds visit newest department store... Change made on the spot... The pneumatic tube system for shooting money to some remote part of the building has been abolished. Each of the hundred or more departments in the store has its own little kiosk for a cashier." New York Times, 1 May 1904, p.9

NEW YORK. W.K.Gilbert. Air-Line system. Lamson brochure shows men's outfitting.

NEW YORK. Lamstons, Church Ave. "The Lamston's on Church Ave. had a once common and colorful method of handling the situation. You brought your purchases to a clerk behind a counter. She added them up and wrote a receipt. Your money and the receipt went into a basket, which was whisked away to an accountant hidden in a booth above the store (like a projection booth). The accountant made your change, which came back in the same basket with your receipt. This ended c. 1955 when they put check out aisles and cash registers in the front." Paul Matus in posting to nyc.transit newsgroup, 30 Oct. 1998

NEW YORK. Macys, Herald Square. Opened in 1902 with 9 stories, 33 elevators, 4 escalators and pneumatic tube system. Urbanities, Spring 1996 and University of San Diego website. Lies carried out pioneering time and motion study there in 1928. Probably the largest pneumatic tube system in the world - see ROCHESTER: Sibleys below. Macy's had nearly 24 miles of tubing, the brass cylinders inserted in it traveling a total of over 12,000 miles, or half way around the world, on a busy day." Hendrickson, p.57
• "The newly expanded Macy's at Herald Square had eight hundred pnrumatic tube lines. Thirty women sat at desks in front of a moving belt, twisted open cylinders containing sales checks and money, made change, and stamped the receipts. The best cashiers could do this two thousand times a day, which is roughly once every thirty seconds, while a relative beginner could process six hundred a day, once every minute and a half." Jane Lancaster. Making time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth - a life beyond "Cheaper by the dozen". (North Eastern Univ. Press, 2004) p.237

NEW YORK. J.C.Penney. Lamson pneumatic tube system. Lamson brochure, 1952

NEW YORK. Russeks, Brooklyn. Lamson pneumatic tube system. Lamson brochure, 1952

NEW YORK. Salvation Army Thrift Store, 536 W 46th Street. "Buy something .. just to watch the cashier bottle your cash and send it 'Being John Malcovich' style through a pneumatic tube to parts unknown. Moments later the tube returns your change and a receipt." Citysearch website

NEW YORK. Stern Brothers. "Worked at Stern Bros.. during my senior year at high school. Remember there were no cash registers then and when a sale was completed, the money was sent to a cashier located in the basement of the store in a cylinder type container. Cashier made the change and via a pneumatic tube sent it to me and I, in turn, sent it back to the salesperson." RetSchSecy posting to (Reader's Digest) Community Talk website, 14 Jul. 2004

ONEIDA. Clark and Collins. "The box was hung from a track, something like an upside down train track, which went up to and along the ceiling to a cashier located on a second floor balcony or loft... I think there were several of the stations on the sales floor... When the store was busy there would be two or three little boxes buzzing back and forth at one time. We would see the cashier start to send a box back and we would try to guess if it was ours, or if it would switch to some other clerk's location." Family Stories from Madison County website

ONEONTA. J.C.Penney, corner of Ford and Main Streets. "Your cash was whisked to the cashier on their unique overhead trolled system." Oneonta High School Alumni Association Newsletter vol.1 iss.2 (July 2000), p.6

PENN YAN. House of Shoppes, 131 Main Street. "The Lown's Building, built in the late 1800s, has been historically renovated, and still houses the Lamson Cash Carry System... Feel free to ask an employee for a demonstration." (Springworks website) System was auctioned off when the store was sold and then sold back to the owners of the House of Shoppes. (Kathryn Larrabee). Videoed by the Lemelson Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. "The Lamson Cash System, a series of six overhead cash-carrying containers on wires, was used to allow central office handling of all cash." Charles R. Mitchell: Penn Yan and Keuka Lake. Charleston SC: Arcadia, 2004, p.25

ROCHESTER. Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co., East Main Street. Moved there in 1906 after a fire in earlier building. "Located in the basement, a cadre, comprised of dozens of women, sat at banks of pneumatic tubes tied to every department throughout the store. In all, Sibley's had thirty-four miles of such tubing, the largest pneumatic tube system in the world." Crooked Lake Review, Winter 2004.
Photographs in Shilling, Donovan A.: Rochester's leaders and their legacies (Charleston SC: Arcadia, 2005) p.124 and Shilling, Donovan A.: Rochester's downtown (Charleston SC: Arcadia, 2001) p.101
"I remember as a small child watching the 'tubes' that carried the customers money in a canister along the ceiling and disappearing from site [sic]" (DJBURL7 posting to NY-Memories-L list, 10 Oct. 00).
"The pneumatic tube system through which in-store communications took place (including the sending of sales slips and the retrieval of change for customers) was the second largest in the world, following only Macy's in New York City." Sarah Elvins. Sales and celebrations: retailing and regional identity in Western New York State, 1920-1940. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2004. p.7

ROCHESTER. Department store [same as above?], Midtown Mall. "They put your money in a pneumatic tube thingie (like at the bank) and sent it down to the cellar where they made change and wrote a receipt. I was told that this pneumatic system was unique in that it was the largest and most intricate in the entire country (and made entirely of copper)." 'Aquamarine Starlight' in posting to Max Creek Forum, 24 Jan. 2005

ROCHESTER. Weed & Co. Lamson pneumatic tube system. Lamson brochure, 1952

SCHENECTADY. Wallace Armer, Erie Blvd. Using a cash carrier until they went bankrupt in 1996. Dead Media Working Notes 21.6 . See Reminiscences. Also posting to comp.dcom.telecom, 24 Apr. 2003. "There was a very old Army Surplus/Hardware store in downtown Schenectady called Wallace Armor. It had .. this funky metal track running all through the store. When you bought something, they sent the money up the track to a room upstairs, and then they would make up the receipt and send the change back down on the track." Liz, posting to Brave Athena, 22 Nov. 2005. In 1997 the system was bought by a private collector. Photo of exterior (J. Merli).

SYRACUSE. [Business unknown], 331 S. Salina Street. "Standard electric cable cash carrier, now operated at 331 S. Salina St.: 17 stations. Sell cheap. See B.B.Glven, 502 Keith Bldg. Syracuse Herald, 1 Aug. 1929, p.31

TROY. Friars department store. Pneumatic tube system. Troy's Community Newsletter