Chicago’s last manually operated public elevators near their last ride
The Fine Arts Building on South Michigan Avenue is a living museum where art is displayed and made behind every door on every floor. It’s home to the Studebaker Theater, which began as a showroom for the company’s horse-drawn carriages, and it’s where W.W. Denslow illustrated ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.’ WGN’s Mike Lowe invites you to hop in and take a ride aboard what many consider to be the last of its kind in Chicago—a manual elevator—to explore everything the building has to offer (while you still can).
What travesty, shutting down an art, in a supposed arts haven. kinda shows beauty (and art) is in the eye of beholder, and most people do not ‘get’ industrial art
As a Chicago native this has always been my favorite building in the city. It’s like stepping into another era. I’m sad to see those beautiful elevators go.
MICHELLE GIBSON and JON LEVI may open your eyes to an occulted reality regarding “old world”.
I LOVE those old elevators. I’m from the New York City metro area and I’m old enough to remember when there were still some in buildings in New York City. I think the last time I rode in one there was in the early 1990’s.
Up until the mid-1960s there seemed to be at least one manually operated elevator in every Loop building. I still remember them at Marshall Fields with the operators calling out the floors and what was on them.
The elevator cab was likely manufactured by Tyler Elevator Products which had a foundry to make bronze castings for decorative elements like those in this cab. Otis didn’t make cabs back then and relied on other suppliers like Tyler. Tyler supplied the cabs for most Chicago high rises like the John Hancock, Sears Tower, etc.
Sad to see…. I grew up in Baltimore during the ’50s and ’60s. I loved riding on the manual gated department store elevators downtown back then. They were more fun than after they were modernized. Your stomach would do a flip when the operator would quickly stop the car even with the floor.
I’m disappointed the news didn’t show the actual electric motor assembly of the elevator… As its a beautiful mechanism, with twin balls on the top of the motor, that run on a shaft that allow the balls to expand apart or contract back towards the center, to governor the speed of the elevator car …
Another piece of our history slowly fades away…Too bad!
When I was last at Petco Park in San Diego, they still had elevator operators.
Shame on the management for destroying the most charming aspect of this historic building!!!!
It’s a pretty safe bet that this is really a cost saving measure.
These are in so many old NYC buildings for freight service
The Odd Fellows Building in South Bend had manually operated elevators with no inside gates.
The apartments at n Winthrop and grainville has these in their buildings. Loved using the manual elevators when I lived there.
The mom in Family Natters was an elevator operator in the tv show “Perfect Strangers”
I’m not sure but the freight elevator at 180 N. Michigan Ave was manual when I made deliveries there about 20 years ago. There was no elevator operator so us delivery guys had to do it ourselves.
