Old Elevator from the 30s

I don’t know if anyone here is interested in elevators (I thought there was someone here who is). Anyways, I found a video clip from the CBC segment “Only In Canada”. It features my hometown, in the Kingsmill department store downtown. There is an Elevator in there that was installed in 1932, so it’s about 82 years old. The segment is focused on Mary, the elevator operator they have, but they do show the controls and such for it. Pretty neat vid, to see an elevator that old still in operation. Currently, Kingsmills is closing it’s doors this year, and the college in the city, Fanshawe, wants to buy the building for their downtown campus. Hopefully they keep that old elevator still in operation.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2335172600/

There is only one other elevator enthusiast who I know is on this forum: NewEnglandElevators.

Also, quite frankly, I’m an elevator enthusiast myself. :roll:

Ah yes, a nice older OTIS hand-cranked elevator (you pull the lever to the left, it goes down, and pulling the lever to the right, it goes up). Pressing the buttons on the outside of the elevator (the “call” buttons) will activate an indicator of some sort in the car (a light or some other mechanical thing). This tells the operator which floor to go to, and the direction the person will want to go.

Here’s a video demonstrating the call system on an older elevator like this (not my video, from another elevator photographer).

It’s great to see an older elevator like this still in operation. It seems like a 50/50 chance with the college buying a historical building that they would either keep the elevator or have another company modernize it to make it convenient for people to use (pushbuttons in the elevators, etc). Or they may leave these for some other purpose (for the sake of historical purposes) and install newer ones in some other part of the building.

Slightly Off Topic: If an institution buys an older building like this and then modifies it for their own use, more than likely, they will try to keep as many of the historical features in it as they can. Seeing this college has an architecture technology program, in a way, preserving an older building like this would be great for students in that program to see a method on how an older building like this is built.

I’ve seen a few pretty old elevators in my job as a fire alarm inspector.

One of my favorites is a bank of three elevators in a tall building in Portland that was built in the 1920s and added on to in the 1940s and 1960s. All original Otis Autotronic system, with the weird buttons that stay in when you press them and pop out when you arrive at your destination floor. Only thing that has been added to these elevators is firefighter recall but other than that the old elevator controllers - lots and lots of relays - are still functional.

Another one I have seen is a freight elevator with wooden “baby crib” doors that slide up. It’s a continuous-pressure elevator, meaning it only has two buttons inside the car – UP and DOWN. Pretty neat.

Andrew, have you been to the storage building on Reed Street? I rid the old freight elevator there before it was gutted and replaced.
I actually have some parts from the old freight elevator that were taken out during the renovation.

I do hope they keep it. They are planning to use it for the second part of their downtown campus (They just opened the campus back in February, it is actually right across from the Kingsmills building). The campus itself is for digital and performing arts, So I don’t know if they will move some other programs in there (such as the architecture tech program like you said). But their plan is to renovate the building and actually add on three more floors to it, so it could be that elevator’s last days.