Revolving Doors Give Spin to Explanation

Hey, Cece. In your column, What’s the purpose of revolving doors?, you say:

WTF? What could this possibly mean? How do the “real estate operators” know what doors you’ve been through and what do they do with that information afterward?

Either this is the world’s worst attempt at a joke or you were hitting some thirty-year-old hash when you wrote this.

C’mon, E.M., you know it’s the former. It’s not half as bad a joke as you might typically hear on, say, NPR’s “Whad’ya Know?”, which isn’t saying much.

FWIW, I thought it was a pretty good joke. Of course, I got the joke about contating Paul McCartney, Jerry Mather and Bob Denver through a seance, too.

Nowadays, all revolving doors have regular doors next to them. Either with or without a vestibule.
So they have only one purpose today, nostalgia.

That was also the point of Cecil’s column. If a building only had revolving doors you’d have no choice in how you entered.

But if it had only revolving doors, people in wheelchairs, or people bringing in items on a cart/dolly, couldn’t get in.

My building has revolving doors, right next to automatically-opening sliding doors, and no vestibule. Most everyone takes the sliding doors, which let the building’s cooled or heated air out. So I usually take the revolving doors to be a good citizen. The only trouble is, the direction to the parking lot takes you right in front of the automatic doors, so I have to walk way around to keep from triggering them to open, defeating the purpose. I’m probably the only person in our building who actually does this. I’m also the only one to use the stairs (I’m on the 10th floor).

My building has a normal door next to the revolver; it seems about 50/50 as to which door people use. The normal doors have a sign that says “please use revolving door”, which a lot of people ignore.

No, they have the purpose Cecil mentioned, keeping excessive air from moving from the outside inside and vise versa. Buildings are required by law to have ‘regular’ doors next to the revolving doors to allow a mass exit during emergencys.

For an example why see this Wiki Article.

Or try a google search on revolving door tragedy

No, because you wouldn’t have to let the doors go both ways, then, you’d just have open out doors instead.

Could you clarify what you mean? Wind generally doesn’t read the sign that says “in” or “out”.

We’re not talking about the doors blowing open of their own accord, but the gusts that are produced by people opening the doors to pass through them.

Oh, or are you saying you could just include exit-doors for fire reasons and not allow entry except through the revolver?

You still need normal doors sometimes – as previously mentioned, wheelchair access and package delivery are big ones. The point is that those should be rare relative to the number of people who could easily use the revolving door.

I usually enter through the hymen to be a good citizen.

Oh, sorry, I guess I conflated two independent threads. How embarrassing. . . .

If you are embarassed by conflated threads, you should shop at better stores, ones with their own tailors.

I’m puzzled by it too.

Best I can think is that he means that if they are able to sell you a property with revolving doors they know that you’re a mug.

If that’s what he meant, he should have said “architect” instead.