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Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building

Public Reaction

The Woolworth Building elevators received mixed reactions. In 1917, the British commissioner, Balfour, visited the Woolworth Building to view the Manhattan skyline from the observation platform. He and his party were “marveled” by “the speed of the lifts and the mechanical perfections of the building.”[1] In 1924, the Prince of Wales also paid a visit to the iconic skyscraper. He took the elevator up to the offices of Arthur Woods, the former police commissioner. When the prince expressed his desire to visit the observation platform, building officials offered to give him a private elevator. However, he declined, remarking that he did not intend to “mar any one else’s pleasure.”[2]

Other people were not as impressed. An article published in the Los Angeles Times stated that tenants in New York showed an “aversion to going above forty stories from the ground.”[3] According to one of the largest renting agencies in the city, some tenants “complain[ed] of the long elevator journey, others the comparative isolation, and still others [were] honest enough to admit a shade of dread or doubt.”27 No floors were tenanted above the forty first story in the Woolworth Building.27

Despite this, Otis Brothers & Co. used the project to further promote their business. An advertisement for the company featured a large image of the Woolworth Building on the front. The flyer went on to describe the Otis elevator as:

“The greatest factor in the up building of the world today – the ONE thing that has made possible the construction of the Titanic structures of stone and steel that everywhere dot the marts of trade and industry – the ONE thing that has heightened the ‘sky line’, and marvelously increased the land values of the world’s greatest cities, insuring to them unlimited development, concentration and prosperity.”[4]

The Woolworth Building’s elevator service was certainly recognized as one of the factors for the skyscraper’s success. If it had been equipped with traditional hydraulic elevators, a trip up and down the building without a single stop would have taken more than ten minutes.29 If stops were factored in, “more than half an hour would be consumed in making the trip.”[5]
 
[1] "WOOLWORTH TOWER VIEW AMAZES BALFOUR." New York Times (1857-1922), May 13, 1917.
[2] "Prince Rides in Subway Jam Twice." The New York Herald, New York Tribune (1924-1926), Sep 13, 1924.
[3] "HEIGHT OF BUILDINGS REACHED." Los Angeles Times (1886-1922), Feb 12, 1914.
[4] Otis Brothers & Co. "Otis Elevators." Advertisement. Architects' and Builders' Magazine, December 1913, 17.
[5] "Going Up." Wall Street Journal (1889-1922), Dec 06, 1912.

Ray Li

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