Riding a Time Capsule Up & Down
December 18, 2017 8:24 PM   Subscribe

Elevators! Manually operated with attendants. Wood paneling. Seats. Mirrors. A look into the past with those few elevators in NYC that are still manual and the operators who've been up and down in them for decades. And if you love elevators and mysteries, you must read The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. You'll be drawn into the Intuitionist school of elevator inspectors pitted against the Empiricist school. Fascinating.
posted by MovableBookLady (32 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh god my building had an actual for real manually operated elevator for years and I miss it muchly.
posted by The Whelk at 8:51 PM on December 18, 2017


Oh wow, what a fascinating article - those old elevators are beautiful.
posted by fever-trees at 8:53 PM on December 18, 2017


I used to do office supply deliveries all around downtown Spokane, and one building I went to regularly had several floors of hallway-around-a-central-atrium layout, and the elevator was a metal lattice cage (decorative!) that was lifted up a not-enclosed lattice shaft up through the atrium, and the door was scissor-hinged and had to be manually opened and closed and the elevator didn't always stop level with the floor (especially if I had a large load of copy paper).

It was beautiful and charming and felt so old fashioned and was also completely terrifying unless I only looked straight ahead and never around.
posted by hippybear at 9:30 PM on December 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Posts like these always give me a little lift.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:36 PM on December 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


And if you love elevators and mysteries, you must read The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.

"How did you like the mystery?"
"It was fantastic, on so many different levels!"
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:36 PM on December 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'll show myself to the down escalator now
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:37 PM on December 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


David S. Pumpkins would like this post.
posted by hippybear at 9:45 PM on December 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


That was delightful.
posted by latkes at 11:23 PM on December 18, 2017


A family friend graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and got an elevator repair job with Otis. I like to think he got in at the ground floor.
posted by batter_my_heart at 11:29 PM on December 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Very soothing story.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:11 AM on December 19, 2017


The Bank of America building at 69 State Street in Albany ( I was with their Government Specialty Banking group there ) has an "Autotronic" panel still. If Larson's snack shop is still there, she makes the best lunches. Soup, Sandwich, Piece of fruit and a diet coke for like 6 bucks.
posted by mikelieman at 1:09 AM on December 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


In my youth I had a semi-casual job working for a guy that did off-the-book elevator maintenance. In addition to sweeping out the lift wells (not the most salubrious of tasks considering it was in Kings Cross, the red light district in Sydney. You wouldn’t believe how many discarded condoms, used needles and other things were to be found [on the plus side there was a lot of cash too]. Kings Court, I’m looking at you), one of my jobs was to sit on top of the elevator and flip off the safety switch which he would then retrip from the motor room several stories up. Plummeting several floors in the darkness waiting for the jolt as the safety gear kicked in was quite harrowing. Not my happiest work experience.
posted by unliteral at 3:49 AM on December 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


a guy that did off-the-book elevator maintenance

Whitehead should have included wildcat mechanics in his world. Maybe the Guild was too strong for that.
posted by thelonius at 3:53 AM on December 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


There was a fairly large old office building on the south end of Times Square that still had manual elevators in the mid-80s.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:08 AM on December 19, 2017


Over a period needing to pick up random parts I was spending some time meandering through the industrial areas and noticed Otis Elevator was a single storied building, had a chuckle. Then happened across 2-3 other elevator vendors and ALL were in single story buildings. Now what do they know?
posted by sammyo at 5:12 AM on December 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Every year since I was three my mother and I have gone to tea the day after Thanksgiving. When I was little we would go to Boston to the Public Garden to feed the ducks and see the Make Way for Ducklings statues and then go to the Ritz. They were usually just starting to put up Christmas decorations so there would be garlands on the stairs and Boston was cold enough that coming inside to a bright space that was both calm and cheerful felt extremely cozy . Going to Boston to the Ritz for tea also felt unbelievably sophisticated and old-fashioned. I have extremely clear memories of how those days felt, how cold it was and how we'd go to the coat check and then walk up the stairs to the room where they served tea and I'd go to the bathroom to wash my hands because I loved their soap.

Until I was probably fourteen (so I suppose almost twenty years ago) the elevators in the Ritz had elevator operations who worked these sort of wheels to make them go up and down and one year time the gentleman let me drive the elevator! It was extremely exciting! The Ritz sold that building (it is now the Taj, we have been there for a tea few times since) and for many years the elevators have been regular elevators with buttons but I loved going to tea with my mom somewhere fancy and taking the elevator to a high floor to put a postcard in the mail chute so it would go all the way down to the bottom.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:33 AM on December 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


That's a wonderfully written story:
Riding in an old manual elevator makes you realize how boringly quiet today’s elevators are. An old elevator makes a sort of music: the reassuring low hum of the motor, the gentle creaks of turning wheels, the click as each floor goes by, the jingle of the gate closing, like parting a bead curtain or sifting a pile of coins. The only jarring note in Mr. Rivera’s elevator is the call buzzer. It sounds like the wrong answer on a game show.

One of Mr. Rivera’s colleagues, Peter Gari, said he could identify certain residents by the buzz — long or short, or a double hit. “Some people buzz and then a couple of minutes later they buzz again. You get to the floor and they tell you, ‘I’m running late.’ Not my problem, wake up earlier.”
And you gotta love the elevator humor:
Sixty-five years later, the human element still has its fans. At 47 Plaza Street West, on that same morning in early November, Mr. Rivera opened his elevator door and Bob Rubin got on.

“How you doing, Ramon?” he asked.

“I’ve had my ups and downs,” Mr. Rivera replied.

“I’ve never heard that one before,” Mr. Rubin said.
Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 6:55 AM on December 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


About 12 years ago I had an admin job and I had to go get plaques for an award ceremony made. The preferred vendor was in a building with an elevator operator. I’ve never seen another one in Chicago, and I wonder if he’s still there. Every time I’d tell him what floor I was going to, he’d say, “You’re not gonna make trouble, are ya?” Every time. I never came up with a witty response to that. Then I’d get up there and the plaque engraver mostly specialized in Masonic regalia so the office was full of displays of spangled capes and goblets. It was a neat building.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 7:35 AM on December 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


My first apartment building in Philadelphia had a push-button main resident elevator, but a manually-operated freight elevator. After moving in, my roommate and I spent a few weeks regularly getting largish things into and out of the apartment, and having befriended the super, he got to the point where he trusted me to just operate the freight elevator myself. I looooooooooooved it. It was not a self-leveling elevator. It WAS tricky to land on the floor, but you do get a feel for it. (I would be a great elevator operator. Sigh.)
posted by desuetude at 7:51 AM on December 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Went to a party of artists in SOHO (New York) in the 80s.

Foolishly, they let me drive their manually operated elevator. After I'd had a few adult beverages.

Did you know you should not drive those things under the influence?

I did great the first few times.

Then I got cocky.

Drove the thing straight into the roof and broke it.

Luckily, this sort of thing must have happened fairly regularly. They knew what breakers to throw and what part to bounce on to get it all working again.

Still one of my absolute favorite stories.
posted by arkham_inmate_0801 at 7:54 AM on December 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Every time I’d tell him what floor I was going to, he’d say, “You’re not gonna make trouble, are ya?” Every time. I never came up with a witty response to that.

protip: address that kind of person as "Buckwheat"
posted by thelonius at 8:24 AM on December 19, 2017


In the 1930s, a series of strikes and strike threats by elevator operators led bosses to respond with threats of their own. “Building owners fear that any substantial increases in wages for service employees will force them to install labor-saving devices, which will result in a large displacement of labor,” The Times reported in 1935.
Everything old is new again.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:37 AM on December 19, 2017


Great article AND I see I was not the only one who thought of The Intuitionist! It is one of my all-time favorite novels.

The building I used to work in had a freight elevator that we often took because the main elevator was either out of service or had a line out the building of people waiting to get in. The freight elevator was manual and it was a great honor for the super to let you drive. It was very hard to land just right.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:30 AM on December 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


All of the freight elevators in the Empire State Building are manually operated. Same switch layout. I used to run one. It was supposed to be self leveling, but well... I was on the 85th floor to basement one. The cable on that sucker is long. The makes a sound like a theremin when you head down, real eerie. It also has a bit of bounce to it. So if you head down at full speed and bring the switch to the center fast it will oscillate up and down like a yo-yo. The cable will sing its displeasure to you. GING GING ging ging ging I loved that job. Even the nightly garbage run. The cleaning crew would leave the garbage bags for each floor near the elevator. We'd pick it up and bring it down for the garbage crew to take it out. The upper floors were easy, they're small. Two or three bags. Lower down larger, many more bags. Several trips each. We'd stuff the elevator full of bags, floor to ceiling. To the point that you could barely close the gate. Sometimes they would leak... garbage juice. Sometimes on you.

I would gladly do it again.
posted by Splunge at 10:16 AM on December 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's only tangentially related, but this thread reminded me that I got to ride a paternoster lift today.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:31 AM on December 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


When I was 12 years old or so I had my first job ever: running the elevator in the Northwest Tower building for a night. There wasn't a working annunciator (love that word!); I just had to regularly make the trip from the ground floor up to an art gallery, and back. I got pretty good at leveling off, but the gate was finicky. "Don't let the guests open the gate," I was warned. "They'll break it." And of course that's what happened when an obnoxious adult with a cigar ran out of patience.

Now, I'm occasionally called upon to run the huge freight elevator at work. "I've been doing this since I was twelve" didn't impress the guy who did our training, which was disappointing. I'm terrible at leveling that one, though.
posted by hydrophonic at 10:58 AM on December 19, 2017


I believe when I was working in Rockefeller Center many years ago there was a special manual elevator that ran between the tower and the studio buildings. The tower sits on top of and to the east of the studio building. To all appearances they are one building. Except they aren't. (And neither is the separate bit that sits on the west side.) Although that particular elevator may have merely had someone on it to make sure somebody didn't go where they weren't supposed to go.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:48 PM on December 19, 2017


About 12 years ago I had an admin job and I had to go get plaques for an award ceremony made. The preferred vendor was in a building with an elevator operator. I’ve never seen another one in Chicago, and I wonder if he’s still there. Every time I’d tell him what floor I was going to, he’d say, “You’re not gonna make trouble, are ya?” Every time. I never came up with a witty response to that. Then I’d get up there and the plaque engraver mostly specialized in Masonic regalia so the office was full of displays of spangled capes and goblets. It was a neat building.

The Fine Arts Building on S. Michigan?
posted by lagomorphius at 5:50 PM on December 19, 2017


I lived for a little in a place with a freight elevator you drove yourself — it was push button, not
a wheel, but I really enjoyed it.

Also as a claustrophobe who lives in NYC, I'd really like more elevators with operators. It would make me slightly less scared of being stuck.
posted by dame at 7:26 PM on December 19, 2017


There are fin-de-siècle birdcages where car and shaft are unenclosed but for ornate wrought-iron gates and the ride brings a pleasant rush of vertigo

Once upon a time I received a parking ticket in California then fairly immediately left to study abroad in Spain for six months. When the court summons came, I didn't contest it but opted for traffic school to reduce the points against my license. Fortunately for me California at the time accepted one (1) internet-based traffic school for this offense.

To get the credit for the course, though, the state required me to get the form notarized. That's no problem in the US, where every second bank teller is a notary public, but such is definitely not the case in Spain.

Here too the internet proved helpful. I found someone who I thought at the time was a lawyer (Spanish notaries, man) and who would notarize my form. An old school, white-shoe, fairly conservative notary whose office was about a block from my school on Calle Miguel Ángel. And I love Madrid, but at 21 I didn't have a proper appreciation for our beautiful old school and the area it was in. I still remember how the building the notary was in was the epitome of aged elegance--complete with manual elevator.

All of that to say, the trip to the notary/lawyer was the first time in my life that I'd ever entered an elevator that was more air than metal. Those are not a thing in my corner of Southern California, y'know?

It had an attendant who was not particularly patient with my fluent but nervous Spanish and of course it was lovely in that turn-of-the-century way, all gold and decoration and faded walls and wood. And it was awful. Imagine a slight dislike of regular elevators--components wear out! it's a very grisly death!--and now add in the human factor. Stir in the fact that the cage only went up to about chest level. Now sit back and enjoy the pleasant rush of vertigo.
posted by librarylis at 7:29 PM on December 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Suddenly I remembered Lady in a Cage. Watched it late at night long ago at Buck Hill Falls. And for some reason THX 1138 came on next. They had some good channels there in the Poconos.
posted by lagomorphius at 8:28 PM on December 19, 2017


> taking the elevator to a high floor to put a postcard in the mail chute so it would go all the way down to the bottom.

Yes! This reminds me of the Bellevue Hotel in Washington DC, near Union Station. It's not there anymore (or it was sold and renamed, renovated or rebuilt) but about 25-30 years ago, the small elevator still had an attendant who wore an old-fashioned hotel service uniform.

The building also had a glass mail chute and in retrospect, I think that might have been the first or second time I'd ever written and mailed postcards. I can't say that the mail chute was the *sole* reason why I sent postcards, because I'd purposely brought my address book with me for that trip -- but I may have sent more postcards than originally planned, so I could drop more cards and watch them fall down the chute.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 10:36 PM on January 14, 2018


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