Very old elevators, still in original form

[kf4rca]

Did you know that in New York City the electric utility supplied DC power to the old warehouse district until 2007 so those businesses could operate their old DC elevators?

[Alex KL-1]

Originally Posted by kf4rca

Did you know that in New York City the electric utility supplied DC power to the old warehouse district until 2007 so those businesses could operate their old DC elevators?

My boss from one job I was in late 2000's commented to me about these DC lines (he travelled to NY on early 2000's).

[vortalexfan]

I worked at a coffee shop that was linked to a day program that was for people with disabilities that was on the main floor of an 1880s vintage "skyscraper" (5-story building) in downtown Goshen, Indiana that when it was built it was originally a hardware store on the main floor and the 4 floors above were offices for the telephone company (think telephone billing and switchboard offices), and electric company offices, and the basement was storage/warehouse space for the hardware store, and also some bathrooms at one time, anyways the building had its original elevator in it yet.
I believe it was a 2 occupant cage type elevator with an old wooden door with an old mortise lock on it and an old plateglass window, and the controls for the elevator was an old lever switch that activated the motor that would drive the elevator between floors and whichever floor you needed to go to you would pull the lever to shut the elevator off and the amount of time it needed to brake the motor and shut the motor down would be enough time to get you to the opening to the floor you needed.
You would essentially pull the lever about halfway between the floor you started off at and the floor you needed to go to, which usually would of been say the first floor and the second floor, or the second floor and the third floor, etc., or if you needed to go more than one floor up or down you would go the amount of floors you needed to go up or down, and once you got close to the floor you needed to go to, you would pull the lever halfway between the floor you're going past and the floor you need to go to; for example if you were on the main floor and you needed to go to the 4th floor you would go past floor 2 and once you got halfway between floor three and floor four you would switch the elevator off and the coastdown time would be enough to get you to the opening of the 4th floor and you would open the elevator by hand, it was all manually operated, no automation in this elevator.

Unfortunately even though the elevator still worked they kept it blocked off because they were afraid of people abusing it and then getting hurt if it would of broke, because when they fixed up the building they converted the upper floors into public housing and they didn't want people to monkey around with the elevator and then have it break and people get injured and then risk getting sued, so basically its just for "historical" display purposes.

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by kf4rca

Did you know that in New York City the electric utility supplied DC power to the old warehouse district until 2007 so those businesses could operate their old DC elevators?

On the AC side, old elevators and "lifts" in Philadelphia and other cities that once used two phase (240 volts, 4 wires, 90 degrees out of phase). Later on, those same buildings were fitted with 3 phase to two-phase transformers, so the "old elevators" could still be used when overheads were upgraded to 3 phase, 120 degrees phase lag. It was not as simple as replacing a motor.