Can't say I've been in any buildings which still had working 'antique' elevators, at least anywhere near as old as the one in the Victor Hotel. Closest thing I can think of is at one of the buildings at a college I attended, which had a single person (I think) elevator which I never got to ride in because it was restricted to use by handicapped people only. It had a regular-looking door on the front with a window and a locking doorknob on it, plus a lock next to the door for the controls. The light was always off, except for perhaps one brief instance where I walked by it and it was being worked on, but I couldn't see much. Guessing it was of the birdcage type, but again, I never really got to see inside of it, much less use it.
As far as elevators I've used goes, the closest I can think of is another college building, which had two older elevators for general use. Both were of different types; one had a modern style split door, though I'm pretty sure it had a mechanical blockage sensor bar instead of a modern optical type. It was very slow and creaky, and I didn't like using it for fear that it would break down, which it eventually did and was inoperable for my entire senior year. The other one, which was much quicker, just had a single sliding door with the same sort of mechanical sensor bar, which took a decent amount of force to activate. Also, unlike every other elevator I've used, the "DOOR OPEN" and "DOOR CLOSE" buttons actually
did something, instead of being there purely for placebo effect. I liked it because if I was late for class and nobody else was approaching the doors, I'd hop in, press the DOOR CLOSE button, that big single door would quickly slide shut, and the car would start moving. Pretty sure neither elevator had been inspected in years, and I have a feeling they've been modernized in the nearly 20 years since I attended that school.
OP, have you ever had experience with a
paternoster lift? I understand those are more common in Europe than they ever were in the States, if any were ever installed here. Seems like a rather dangerous concept to me.
-Adam