You can learn a lot about New York’s makers and inventors just by coal hole covers—the decorative iron lids that lead to a storage space beneath the sidewalk where coal for heating a house or building was stored.
This beauty embossed with stars sits at Fifth Avenue and 30th Street.
“Dreier Safety Coal Hole Cover” it reads, listing an address in today’s East Village and a patent date, April 1919.
What’s a safety coal hole cover? A 1979 New York Times obituary for Abraham Dreier, the Polish immigrant who founded the Dreier Structural Steel Company in 1917, doesn’t explain it. But the obituary does say that Dreier patented the cover after he began his career making fire escapes.
Dreier’s company had an earlier address on the Lower East Side’s now-defunct Goerck Street.
What’s better than a coal hole cover than a coal hole cover with vault lights? This one was made by the Brooklyn Vault Light Company, once located on Monitor Street in Greenpoint. (The company had several addresses in the neighborhood, the ever-informative Walter Grutchfield says.)
Vault lights are basically glass skylights that allow sunlight into a space, though I’m not sure why that would be advantageous in a hole designed to store coal.
This coal hole cover is also a safety cover, patented in August 1905. The company operated from 1896 to 1958, according to Glassian. The company is gone, but the cover remains at East 73rd Street near Lexington Avenue, a quiet monument to the ironworks of another New York.
Tags: Brooklyn Vault Light Company, coal hole covers, Coal Hole New York City, Coal Hole NYC, Dreier Safety Coal Hole Cover
Ephemeral New York 
July 27, 2020 at 11:51 am |
Walter Grutchfield adds (at https://www.waltergrutchfield.net/dreier-51market.htm)
The patent mark at the bottom reads Pat. April 1 – 1919. This patent (no. 1,298,678) can be read on google patents, where Abraham Dreier claimed to provide a coal hole cover which is “automatically locked to the frame when the former is in position over an opening.”
July 27, 2020 at 8:11 pm |
Walter Grutchfield knows his stuff, thanks for the link and info.
July 27, 2020 at 1:47 pm |
My parents Home on Noble Street in Greenpoint Brooklyn had a coal chute with Elaborate design on it and the word UNION. When Greenpoint started to become gentrified historians began giving walking tours of the hood and the group would stop to talk about and admire the cover. One morning we came out to find only a hole in the ground. Alas, someone most likely a tour taker who knew the value of it swiped it. It had lived there for over 100 years. I wonder where it lives today.
July 27, 2020 at 8:10 pm |
That’s terrible, what a shame. It’s hard to imagine someone with the audacity to steal a 100 year old iron cover from a Brooklyn Street.
July 27, 2020 at 6:11 pm |
Love the coal hole covers, but it’s worth a mention that thankfully, NYer’s no longer burn climate-killing coal for heat, hot water or electricity
July 28, 2020 at 2:54 am |
The reason to admit daylight through the coal hole cover was that under the cover was a room the coal was stored in. The coal was stored in a room under the cover, not a hole. Someone used a shovel to remove the coal and transport it to the boiler to be burned. Shoveling coal in the dark is not recommended.
July 28, 2020 at 3:20 am |
Thank you Henry, that makes sense.
July 29, 2020 at 2:43 am |
In New Rochelle, the apartment building I lived in until I was 5 burned coal for heat. I assume they changed many years ago although the building, now about 100 years old, us still there and quite nice, too. Coal trucks came in and off-loaded their cargo into a chute. The superintendent used to shovel it by hand! The building probably had 40 or so units, so it must have been a lot of work for the super!
December 21, 2020 at 2:43 am |
[…] to work in the blustery weather, the men from the coal company shovel a load into a sidewalk coal hole, where it can be transferred to the furnace to keep residents from freezing to […]
December 21, 2020 at 9:15 am |
In the first photo the cover seems to be hinged. This may be the “safety” feature; a visual reminder the hole is open, plus it can’t be lost or stolen. In the second photo it’s made by a vault light company but does not incorporate vault lights. “Safety Coal-Hole Cover and Ventilator” indicates they are ventilation holes. Coal dust buildup can be explosive.
December 21, 2020 at 10:38 am |
[…] to work in the blustery weather, the men from the coal company shovel a load into a sidewalk coal hole, where it can be transferred to the furnace to keep residents from freezing to […]
December 28, 2020 at 8:05 am |
[…] to work in the blustery weather, the men from the coal company shovel a load into a sidewalk coal hole, where it can be transferred to the furnace to keep residents from freezing to […]
January 14, 2021 at 9:52 pm |
Was the “room” actually under the street or the head of a chute to the basement of the building. I noted reference in comments to chutes.
January 15, 2021 at 2:01 am |
I’m not sure—does anyone know?
January 15, 2021 at 8:54 am
I believe at least some were under the sidewalks. Remember those round translucent glass “windowlets” set in squares in the sidewalk? I remember my father showing me a room under a set of those when I was very young, but I don’t remember if it was a coal bin or just extra space.
January 15, 2021 at 3:38 pm
Interesting Country Paul; I always thought those windowlets let light into storage spaces. But maybe not.