Another Day Downtown

On another hard day of work at the May Co. remodel, we were asked to remove an existing wall and prepare the area in the Gift department for remodeling. That seemed simple enough and so we went down to the Hardware department and “borrowed” some hammers to use in our task; they were almost large enough to qualify as sledge hammers.

We then attacked the designated wall. Old plaster and dust flew. As the wall came down, we were expecting to see the outer wall of the building; that was what the plans told us to expect, but what we saw was another plaster wall and a door. Surprise!

After clearing away some of the debris, the May Co. representative was called and while we waited for his arrival, we decided to open the door and see what was there. The door had a frosted glass pane in it and it was obvious that some sort of light could be seen behind it. The door had been nailed closed before it had been covered over so it took some effort for us to open it.

Once opened, we saw the light source; this was an old exit stairway and there were windows to the outside in it. These stairs hadn’t been used in many years and somewhere in the stairway, a window must have been open or broken, because city pigeons had obviously been living in it…for a very long time! On the stairs there was a mountain of pigeon poop that followed the trail of the sprinkler line above. The pigeons had been roosting and nesting here in comfort for who knows how long.

Avoiding the obvious, we explored a little bit of the stairs and found the broken window on the floor above us. And we discovered that at each landing and above each door there were old-fashioned gas lamp fixtures. There was no trace of electrical power, so this stairway had to have been abandoned quite early in the history of the building.

After the May Co. representative arrived, he determined that a crew of cleaning people should tackle the mess and the pigeons were to be chased out permanently. Then we were to seal up the stairway once more.

Plans were then revised and eventually we built a new wall in the Gift department. Now I have to wonder if that hidden stairway still exists, or did some future remodeling expose it to scrutiny again?