Remember Elevator Operators?

[Bob Womack]

Miller's, the biggest department store in my hometown had them. "Second floor, ladies' and men's ready to wear. Watch your step, please." Generally, when I was a kid, African-Americans were the operators. They wore sharp uniforms. I thought these folks hung the moon. When my mom would take those interminable shopping trips to the department store, I'd sneak away and ride the elevator, watching my heroes operate them and trying to memorize their patter for the floors. On Otis elevators there was a brass twelve-inch rotating disk with a wooden handle that controlled the cab movement. You had to stomp a floor pedal to unlock it. As you rotated the disk one way or the other, the lift moved faster as you moved away from top dead center. There was a certain amount of skill involved in timing the operation of the handle so that you smoothly arrived with the floor of the cab exactly aligned with the floor of the building.

The college I went to bought a 1927 five-floor castle, originally built on top of a mountain as a luxury resort. They had three of those old manual Otis elevators left over from the luxury resort days that were utterly impractical for college kids to use. However, I got a work-study job as an electrician to put myself through college. Imagine my excitement when on the first day I was issued a key to the original Otis manual-operator elevator to move my kit and supplies to the various floors. I actually got really good at operating them, but I always thought of my heroes at the department store.

Bob

[Lkristians]

I do remember elevator operators.
I was an usher at a large movie theatre in Flushing, Queens from 1967 - 1969. Had to wear a tux! And the smell of popcorn still reminds me of "the good old days."

[Gitfiddlemann]

They must have all moved back to Belarus:

[endpin]

In the uniform fiasco vein:

Around 1990, my boss - a retired Marine Corps Colonel - was going to wear his dress uniform into the plant [a major defense contractor] on the Marine Corps birthday. He was planning to cut a cake with his sword and the whole ceremonial thang.

Don’t know exactly what went on when he showed up at the gate, but he was summarily turned way and had to drive home and change clothes.

Not sure WHAT he was thinkin' - To his credit though, he did own up to the whole affair after he finally got to work!

[tinnitus]

Among 100s of businesses in downtown Portland (OR), Lippman's and Meier & Frank employed elevator operators right into the 1960s. I cannot recall if they were uniformed or not. At age 5 or so, two things intrigued me in the elevator - the little fold-out stool affixed with hinges to the wall where the operator stood (never saw it deployed), and the minute adjustments required to align the door sills precisely at each stop. Seemed like rocket surgery and a perfectly noble career path at the time, with no idea that air traffic control and law enforcement would become my realities instead.

Meier & Frank was where I bought my first (Japanese) Granada nylon-string guitar with paper route money a few years later. I think the elevators were automatic by then. Otis.

In 1975-75, I worked for an audio/visual rental firm, delivering and operating sound systems, stage lighting and even a huge Simplex 35mm carbon-arc movie projector (circa 1920s) from a drive-in theater. When my boss leased an ancient building on Front Avenue (now Naito Parkway), I was horrified to discover the elevator was actually water-powered, requiring the user to turn a valve to slowly raise/lower it between floors! I hastily ditched that job before the move to that site.

I had electric guitar gear by that time and was playing in various clubs around town with an obnoxiously loud cover band (Montrose, Aerosmith, BOC, Kiss, Zep, Stones, Johnny Winter, etc.). Surprised today that I can recall anything from that era.

[MakingMusic]

Originally Posted by ChrisE

That seems like an interesting job but I imagine it has its ups and downs.

Elevator puns are bad on so many levels

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by AndreF

They must have all moved back to Belarus:

I've observed a direct correlation between the diameter of the military peak cap's brim and the degree to which that country's government tends toward authoritarianism. It seems inviolate, for some funny reason.

Bob

[reeve21]

Yes, I remember. As late as the late 80's in some office buildings. Never met one who wasn't pleasant to me

[Chipotle]

Uh, no.

Does that make me too young to hang out here? (I'm certainly old enough, but I grew up in western US cities without many tall buildings or elevators to begin with. The only elevator "operators" I really ever saw were in department stores in Japan when I traveled there in the '90s

[Walterc]

Originally Posted by Don Lampson

I remember elevator operators wearing a uniform, and movie ushers too!
Don

In the late '60s I bought a movie usher uniform from Goodwill for a Halloween costume. It was quite spiffy, bright blue with gold stripes. It was actually very well made, of thick wool fabric. I used the pants for years for cross country skiing; they were really nice when the temps were below 0F.

[Busdriver63]

England Brothers. Pittsfield, Massachusetts

[Photojeep]

I do not remember them but my old business partner had a summer job as an elevator operator in a department store in Seattle a very long time ago.

He used to tell funny stories about the job and also how difficult it was to line up the elevator car with the floor of the building. One story involved his being distracted by a pretty girl and upon sudden realizing he was overshooting the intended floor, he cranked the lever 180 degrees to reverse direction. Doing so not only reversed the direction (too quickly) but also stretched the elevator's cable to the point the car's brakes engaged with a horrifying squeal.

After all of that, the car wound up EXACTLY even with the originally intended floor. The doors opened and people ran out of the car in a panic.

My partner calmly walked out of the car, through the store and went home. He never returned and they never called him back.

Best,
PJ

[raysachs]

The Smith Tower is Seattle's first Sky Scraper (although by modern standards, it's just reaching the knees of some buildings). It was built in 1914 and had manually operated elevators until just a couple of years ago. Very early in my career, in the mid-80s, I worked on the 18th Floor for a couple of years and had an amazing view of the Puget Sound. I was sitting in that office when the news of the Challenger disaster came over someone's radio.

I missed more than a few busses because of how long it could take to get on and off an elevator in that building, let alone have one show up. I didn't realize they'd automated the elevators until I just googled it when I started responding to this thread. Turns out in 2017 they switched them over. I blame this for the pandemic - you're just not supposed to mess with some things...

Despite the occasional inconvenience, it was pretty cool. You'd get to know each operator pretty well after a few months. You'd know which elevators you hoped did stop for you. And which one's you hoped didn't!

-Ray

[Huskyman]

I was in New York around 1978 and the building I needed to go into and go to one of the floors had a operator. They don't do that anymore in a big city?

Kind of a funny story. My wife and I were at Fisherman's Wharf about 10 years ago and when we went to the parking garage we had to take the elevator up about 3 floors. So when we got in here is a kid about 11 ( I hope his parents were close by) and he was standing by the buttons so I said, 3 please. So he pushes 3 and when we get off I reach into my pocket and give him a buck.

His smile was worth a million bucks!

[ChrisE]

This thread had been very informative.

I was born in 1968 and grew up in a small town and probably never even went in a building that had an elevator until I was in my teens, which was in the late 80’s. By then it was probably all push-button elevators like we have now.

I’d heard of elevator operators before, but until I read this thread I never realized elevators had levers, wheels, etc that required a skilled person to operate the machine. I seriously thought it just someone pushing a button.

The things one can learn on the internet.