No, this isn’t a recent picture. I got it in 1999 or 2000 at Richmond Valley Road at Madsen Avenue in the south end of Staten Island, years before the Bricktown Mall was built and the area got busier. Small slot mailboxes used to be fairly ubiquitous in NYC, but the large barrel mailboxes, introduced in the mid-20th Century, gradually took over.
When I started FNY in 1998 there were still a few of the “slots” to be found, mostly in hinterlands like southwest Staten Island, northern Bronx and eastern Queens, but they all disappeared eventually.
Ironically the USPS has returned to the “slot” concept and today, the barrel mailboxes are equipped with slots instead of the pull handles that were formerly employed. Everything that goes around comes around!
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7/11/23