the secret history of the revolving door
The revolving door is most often thought of today, symbolically, in connection to various forms of workplace related dread. as cause of early morning pavlovian groans (christ! here I am again at this hell-hole) or as metaphoric short-hand for conflicts-of-interest, ethical oversight, and corruption. like snapshots from your last colonoscopy or a million dollar damien hirst painting the images conjured aint pretty. The revolving door was not always saddled with such negative connotations. There was a time when it was a symbol of modern man’s ingenuity, an artifact from our energized drive toward the future. Yet surprisingly, even in the glow of the revolving door’s youth, few people were aware of its true origins.
german door historians or “Türherstellers” will offer the following concerning the revolving door:
• H. Bockhacker of Berlin was granted German patent DE18349 on December 22, 1881 for “Thür ohne Luftzug” or “Door without draft of air.”
that’s about as far as their interest in the subject goes.
all the great door histories (like de grote geschiedenis van deuren and il glory dei portelli) mention Bockhacker but then shift focus to Theophilus Van Kannel, of Philadelphia who 7 years later was granted US patent 387,571 for a “Storm-Door Structure.” in many ways the story of the revolving door, known and forgotten, is really the story of Van Kannel.
commonly known facts about Van Kannel and his revolving door include:
• it is perfectly noiseless.
• it effectually prevents the entrance of, snow, rain or dust.
• it cannot be blown open by the wind.
• it excludes street noise.
• persons can pass both in and out at the same time.
• it prevents a direct path between the interior and exterior making it useful as a partial airlock to minimize heat loss from the building.
• it circumvents all that annoying “you first” “no you first” stuff.
• the world’s first revolving door was installed at Rector’s, a restaurant on Times Square in Manhattan, located on Broadway between West 43rd and 44th Streets in 1899.
largely forgotten facts about Van Kannel and his revolving door include:
• the original slogan for his door was “Always Closed.”
• it was marketed (in the victorian manner) as helping to avoid “noxious effluvia” and “baleful miasmas.” from a pamphlet put out by van kannel: It will save life, by preventing those deadly lung and throat diseases which are sure to overtake the unfortunate salesman, cashier or clerk whose duty keeps him near the constantly opening front door.
• van kannel was an irritable sort. in response to the customary reaction to his door he had this to say: ‘Just like a turn-stile,’ so say nine out of ten persons who first see it. As well may we say a tea-kettle is like a locomotive boiler.”
• van kannel originally intended his invention to be installed not only in public buildings but in private homes as well.
which brings us to the crux of things-
that van kannel’s invention turned out to be useful, in the ways we consider it to be so today, is something of a happy accident. that’s not to say van kennel didn’t have a purpose in mind, he spent years perfecting his idea after all, but if you run down the list of its supposed benefits you won’t come upon the intended one.
more than anything the world owes the invention of the revolving door to revenge.
it seems that when van kennel was a boy, still in the care of his mother but just on the cusp of cultural manhood, he found the rules of chivalry bothersome. in particular he refused to accept that he was expected to open the door for women and allow them to cross the threshold before him. a silly sort of quirk certainly but it was taken seriously enough by his mother that she eventually felt compelled to take action. family histories have it that at some point in his twelfth year she administered a bare bottomed spanking, during a salon in the family drawing room, in full view of 37 local mothers and daughters.
this very public shaming over matters of chivalry stuck with van kannel (no wonder- “spankophilus” being a whisper that seemed to follow his steps everywhere) and embittered him further toward the gentlemanly behavior society required.
had this been the only episode the world may have never had a revolving door to shuffle through. as it so happens, however, theophilus van kennel married a woman, who though beautiful and clever had an odd quirk of her own. young abigail van kennel refused to pass from one room of their apartments to another without the assistance of theophilus. she was willing to make many concessions to the new modern ways but her mother had taught her to take matters of chivalry very seriously indeed. “it is the measure of a man!” she’d said “not his inseam!”
theophilus had once tried to put his foot down over the matter, telling his wife one morning, “all this opening doors twaddle just will not do! i can not be rushing around my own home to usher you from room to room!” but he returned home in the evening to find abigail sitting defiantly just inside the bedroom door, right where he’d left her.
after this bit of cruelty on fates part became evident van kennel devoted his full focus to finding some way to sidestep this rule of chivalry or even perhaps create cause for a revision of the rules. he eventually found his answer in what we now call the revolving door.
you see the revolving door was not designed not to keep out snow, or to minimize heat loss, though it does both, but it was designed specifically so that whomever enters the door first is obliged to do all the pushing. so in point of fact, in th erevolving door’s case it would actually be most chivalrous for the man to proceed through the door first. he assumed people would rocognize this and presto- no more door holding! if of course tradition proved irrationally tenacious, as it traditionally did, at the very least the act of obliging women first passage would forever after be obliging them to open the door for you! a sneaky win / win proposition which was tremendously satisfying for such as he.
his own home, as well as the home of his mother, were outfitted with the first 14 revolving doors ever assembled.
in the years that followed, after his invention had taken root, though the rules of chivalry showed no sign of adapting, this little loophole in chivalry amused him to no end. he imagined all the women all over new york, being ushered dutifully into revolving doors by browbeaten sons and husbands “no, no, after you my dear!”
and
that my friends is the true, very nearly forgotten, secret history of the revolving door.
note: all factual bits are from James Buzard’s piece perpetual revolution while all exceptionally silly untruths are my own. i’ll leave it to you to sort out which is which.
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i’m over here laughing, dood. i felt the same way when i was in grade school: why be courteous to girls when they were so vicious? (like the one who broke my watch when we were being forced to dance in school.)
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/18 at 02:22 AM
so hand over a WHOLE mango, please.
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/18 at 06:12 PM
alright deb, you win… i’ve thought and thought but can’t wrap my head around it…
what does “hand over a -whole- mango” mean?!
am i an old fart who isn’t up on the new slang? am i so dense that i just missed it? or are you in fact an accomplished surrealist poet? do tell.
posted by
jmorrison on 11/18 at 06:31 PM
no! don’t tell! the mystery is better than the answer! wait, what am i saying?
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/19 at 12:01 AM
actually, this reminds me of two (2) things:
1. lewis black did a damfunny stand-up bit about hearing somebody say something that made no sense: “If it weren’t for my horse, i probably wouldn’t have spent that year in college.” l.b.‘s theory is that hearing such things causes brain aneurysms because you can’t stop obsessing about it.
2. the new ish of esquire has a sidebar about “highbrow drinking games.” the last one in the list is “read finnegan’s wake, drinking whiskey until it makes sense.”
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/19 at 12:08 AM
mmm…
while I’m all for the bicoastal drinking game of it, (and very much enjoying being the center of attention for the moment) I’ll clue you in. TB is right, the mystery is better than the answer.
The bit about miss abigail van kennel sitting in her room all day put me in mind of the bit “ladies first” from “free to be you and me”. Anytime someone is acting rediculously petulant, the line comes out. I know it’s pretty lowbrow for this crowd, but it’s a pretty funny bit.
Yes, I’m a bit of an older fart than you. And an accomplished tangential conversation killer.
Maker’s on the rocks, anyone?
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/19 at 05:50 PM
see! very few people tend to drop a truly nonsensical non-sequitur in comments. i just knew i wasn’t quick enough to pick up on it.
as for the “i know it’s pretty lowbrow for this crowd” remark let me respond by misquoting one of my favorite taglines (from bibliodyssey):
If it looks like we know anything then the mirrors are working.
or alternately: i resemble that remark!
as for the makers- make it a bushmills and you’re on.
posted by
jmorrison on 11/19 at 06:01 PM
makers is awfully, awfully good though. I got interested in it after hearing an npr interview with the guy who runs the makers mark distillery, in a wee kentucky town. fascinating. the npr guy asked, “did the church frown on your business during the temperance days?” makers maker replied, “no, the distillery built the church.”
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/20 at 12:38 AM
Seems I’ve stumbled upon this entry with perfect timing, as last night I found myself wide awake in the wee hours, pondering whether or not a writer such as myself (think bibliodyssey’s tagline about the mirror, if that’ll help) has a responsibility to keep historical truth clearly separated from all the fictional untruth.
Aren’t we misguiding those people who might find their way to our sites, go on to read a story that is only 10% truth, for instance, but told in such a way that it reads as pure fact?
I tossed around in bed and thought for an hour, maybe more, giving serious consideration to both sides of this argument, then finally gave up, deciding that I would settle the debate once and for all in the morning, after my head had had a chance to clear.
Well, it’s morning, and thanks to The Nonist, I now have a clear and concise answer for my dilemma, which I tell you, has plagued me for quite some time now.
So thanks, Deb, for being in the right place at the right time, because as things turn out, “so hand over a WHOLE mango, please” ends up being just the answer I was looking for.
posted by
Keith on 11/23 at 03:51 PM
thought about that a bit myself keith. my solution is this: if it’s all lies i put it in the fiction category. if it’s half and half i just include a disclaimer, as i did in this post.
i noticed “the history of revolving doors” linked on a few other sites and there was no indication that the content on the other side of the link was satirical. so either they were playing along with the joke or they didn’t read all the way through.
in any case if people aren’t diligent readers then they aren’t looking for facts anyhow, they are looking for entertainment and lies serve just as well in that capacity, probably better.
posted by
jmorrison on 11/24 at 02:49 PM
is the part where Theophilus make the door beacuse he dosn’t want to hold door open true? cuss i yahoo serched and found this webpage and i need to know if this is true beacuse im doing a report on the revolving door for school.
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 02:41 AM
ok, uuuhhhh….this report is due tommarow and i MAY be able to lie if that part isn’t true but seirously, is it true? that Theophilus made the revolving door cuss he didn’t want to hold doors open?
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 02:46 AM
no, robert, you can’t go with this. it’s at least partly a put-on. which part? go to the link jaime listed at the end. that link is to mit’s website. go there for reliable info.
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 02:53 AM
I took a peek at the mit site. He didn’t really do it to get out of opening doors, but he did mean for it to be used in homes, to keep out unhealthy drafts for example. Van Kannel says that with regular doors “every person passing through first brings a chilling gust of wind with its snow, rain or dust, including the noise of the street; then comes the unwelcome ‘bang!’”
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 03:02 AM
Thanks! I just filled out an other index card, one more! I’v look at all the search results on the first yahoo page and NONE of them say when and where he was born, can you help me out? I’ll keep searching so if you can’t fined it, that’s ok.
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 03:09 AM
Doubt his birthplace/date will be easy to find out.
One page mentions that “in high-rise buildings, regular doors are hard to open because there is a slight vacuum caused by air flowing upwards through stairwells, elevator shafts, and chimneys.” while revolving doors are easier to open. Didn’t know that.
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 04:18 AM
In my opinion the comments regarding Uncle T’s lack of chivalry are ungenerous and most likely untrue. But he certainly never married. A lifelong bachelor, he lived out his years with only his machines for comfort.
In any case the the prevalence of automatic revolving doors with motion detectors to sense approaching bodies and set the motor turning have rendered revolving door chivarly a moot point. I always let the ladies go first anyway. He would have wanted it that way.
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/10 at 07:46 PM
lol thats great!!
posted by
Amy on 04/24 at 07:45 PM
I’m in the same boat as Robert. AP United States History project. I only picked him because he has an awesome name. But, this is one of the ONLY pages with any information whatsoever. You can’t get into MIT’s unless you have a special login name, etc. I know its BS, but its going into my report. Thanks for a great story
posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/20 at 06:00 AM
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