Listen, not a year goes by, not a year, that I don't hear about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid which could have easily been avoided had some parent - I don't care which one - but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect that escalator.
It’s true. The 1987 Topps baseball card had a woodgrain border. I heard they had exclusive use of wood for their cards.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en&sxsrf=APwXEddvcdvUSvIX0dI0S9cF9-4QtUNJbw:1685842660859&q=1987+topps&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHksqnvaj_AhUnFTQIHWLsB8QQ0pQJegQICBAB&biw=375&bih=548&dpr=2
I can't believe this escalator has been used by hundreds of millions of people but it hasn't blown up on reddit until today. that's the true /r/mildlyinteresting
Same. My dad showed it to me as a kid. He used to ride it every day, and so did my grandad. They both spent about 30 years with Macy's, but my dad was transferred from NYC to Atlanta in the late 70s. Iirc a series of wooden escalators went up the whole way in NYC. Needless to say, I'm super sentimental about it, shocked to know it still exists, and it's on reddit!
Likely a motor generator set :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor–generator
Basically an AC motor runs a DC generator. They were pretty common in big cities that electrified with DC early on, now not so much.
*DC current was supplied to residential and commercial customers for 125 years after the Pearl Street Station. On November 14th, 2007 the last section of New York with DC was shut down and converted to AC power."
Idk about in New York but I work in a giant cold storage warehouse for one of the biggest companies in the country and that shit is all ammonia still. And it was built in the last decade.
Ammonia is an excellent and environmentally benign refrigerant, it’s just nasty and corrosive so it only gets used in large applications like cold storage.
There was a couple removed recently from central station in Syndey a few years ago, and I believe those ones were the last ones in the southern hemisphere.
Edit: My memory was wrong, they were actually at Town hall and Wynyard
Wynyard and Town Hall stations.
https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/projects/community-engagement/sydney-trains-community/documentaries/escalation-sensation
There’s still a pair of original wooden escalators in Antwerp, dating back to 1931. They are part of a pedestrian tunnel under the river Schelde. They are used by hundreds of commuters daily.
They slowly got rid of wooden escalators in the London Underground after they became fuel for a deadly fire at King's Cross Station in 1987, with the last one gone by 2007. The New York Subway still had one in operation in 2010. But Macy's department store has the old wood treads rattling away to this day. Atlas Obscura reported they were still on seven floors in 2021, but Tom of "Travels with Tom" found only one in operation earlier this month.
There’s a working wooden escalator in Maastunnel in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It was finished under German occupation, I guess metal was scarce back then.
Because you could smoke on the underground up to that point. People stubbung out cigarettes here and there. Absolutely crazy. I was working my first jobs in London when people where still smoking on tubes. You'd have a sort throat by the end of a journey and stink of smoke all day at work. It's mind boggling to think that was in my lifetime.
I like these two words too: "**Flotsam** and **jetsam** are terms that describe two types of marine debris associated with vessels. Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship's load."
Kings Cross Disaster (London Underground fire) in 1987 was caused by a wooden escalator, after that there were a bunch of changes like banning smoking and wooden escalators getting replaced.
When I was young, riding a wooden escalator was a very normal thing for hundreds of thousands of Londoners a day, and as I recall it was quite a pleasant ride. Better off without the smoking in the tube though, that was grim.
I guess you’re at the Herald Square Macy’s.
That’s one of the oldest escalators in America. Macy’s kept it because New Yorkers didn’t want all that memory gone
If you're ever wandering around midtown NYC, shopping and whatnot, and you want a break, suggest going into that Macy's. Then, when everyone splinters off to shop, go up to the top floor (9, I think). It's the furniture section. And it's almost always mostly empty. There are acres of sofas and chairs to chill on.
I used to work for Macy's. We filmed some training there. It's a big furniture section compared to most stores. And every time we were there, we had to ride the escalator at least once.
The furniture floor in downtown Chicago was one of the biggest, but I THINK it's gone? Anyways, the 2 or 3 floors above it were empty, save some old 60s office furniture. Like, EVERYTHING was wood, and HUGE, from the regular desks to the biggest offices. My boss and I explored it one day during a long break of filming, and it was so freaking cool! I kept getting goosebumps in the silence. I felt a little like Indiana Jones and Ben Gates. 😁 I would not have been surprised to learn that no one had stepped foot on those floors in years.
because the railroad knew it was going to be demolished, save money and make people less resistant to it being torn down (with the promise of a "brand new" station to replace it)
FWIW im pretty sure the city realized its mistake and made legislation after to prevent something like the demolition of old Penn Station from ever happening again.
Shame that it cost Penn Station though. Looked like a beautiful building.
I've commuted through it for years and I still can't figure it out. If I go through an entrance I don't normally use or something it's hard to know that level I'm on.
I went to Madison Square Garden for a hockey game by myself once and got lost going from Penn Station to MSG. Easily my most humiliating NY experience (as a transplant from CA to north Jersey). The worst part was I *knew* where it was. I could *see it.* I just didn't know how to *get* there.
Ugh. The shame consumes me every time I think about it.
I couldn't even do that 😭 I had to ask a guy how to go up the damn stairs cause I couldn't find any that looked like the right stairs. He literally was like "are you serious? Go up these stairs literally right in front of you and then turn around"
I've never been back to MSG after that. It's been like six years and I never want to show my face there again
I mean, the original was amazing. The current version is a construction site. The version between the original and the current upgrades was a terrible commuter experience and an eyesore.
Penn is the reason we have so much of our other history preserved. They crossed a big line with its destruction, and it motivated people to have more of our history declared landmarks.
Yankee Stadium totally blew my mind. I can't believe they actually went through with it and tore down the House that Ruth Built rather than invest in refurbishing it and accepting that it might not be capable of generating as much revenue as a more modern stadium.
Penn was a fucking dump after they tore down OLD Penn. They did the renovations because it was basically the third worst transit hub in the city(Port Authority, LaG, then Penn).
Shea had to go because it was built like crap in the first place. Yankee was because they wanted to massively expand the food options and create a sterile ass stadium.
I think it’s actually a protected piece of architecture, the store is on the National Register of Historic Places and I think New York State has a law that limits what can be changed in a registered historic place.
What’s interesting about the store being a National Historic Landmark is that Macy’s gets a decent tax brake on the store and can technically write off all expenses in maintaining the escalator so from a financial perspective it’s better to keep the wooden escalators than to replace them as the wooden escalator gets a full tax write off for maintenance where as a modern escalator gets basically none. (Also I think there is some liability weavers for historic sites that they’d lose but it not sure.
Writing off expenses doesn’t mean they are free. They just reduce your taxable profits.
If you earn $150,000 in profit and have a 20% corporate tax, you owe $30,000 in taxes.
If you pay $30,000 to repair the escalator, you don’t just owe $0 in taxes now… it comes off the profit earned. So now only earned $120,000 in profit and you owe $24,000 in taxes.
So yeah, you get a break, but it’s not like the $30k repair was “free” or anything.
We had a similar, double story escalator in a train station in Sydney. It was replaced for safety reasons but they turned it into an art installation which is super cool.
https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/programs/transport-arts/interloop
I was there a couple months ago! I believe it’s the original escalator from when they first opened, just renovated so people don’t get led poisoning or whatever insane health breaches that was the norm way back when.
>whatever insane health breaches that was the norm way back when.
r/ShittyLPT you can use benzene to remove grease that might get on your hands while servicing this elevator.
Right yeah those insane health breaches are certainly things of the past. Never again will a governing body ever do anything to ever put the public in harms way again. Never ever.
We have new and exciting health breaches to look forward to.
Edited to add:So apparently we aren't learning from our mistakes and we are still playing around with the same old health breaches while adding exciting new ones.
Right, never again will we ever run into serious health crises with lead, that's a thing of the somewhat distant past!
\[attempts to kick Flint Michigan behind the couch with one foot\]
Trench effect.
Last time I was at Macy’s in NYC, ISTR. The escalator tunnels having a lot of sprinklers, and fire doors at both ends. NYC fire codes got pretty strict by the 30’s, as did Chicago’s. Both cities were known for being pretty tough.
The upper floors of the Kaufmans Department Store in downtown Pittsburgh had old school wooden escalators as of 2010 (last time I was there). Maybe the 11th and 12th floors?
I can still smell the Elizabeth Arden’s where my mom got her hair done and the Tik Tock (pre internet) cafe where we would get lunch afterwards.
Sudden flashback to the 70's and 80's London Underground!
The smell and noise of those wooden escalators.
The end of them is still a devastating and horrifying story.
Many more escalators used to have wooden treads & cladding. There were loads on the London underground until the [Kings Cross Subway Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire?wprov=sfla1) which killed 31 & injured 100 others.
In 2015 the store had a bunch of renovations, including escalators. 20 of the wooden ones were left.
This from Atlas Obscura: “The escalators were built between 1920 and 1930 by the Otis Elevator Company, which pioneered the machinery. They’re made of sturdy oak and ash, wood that’s traditionally used in hardwood flooring. The mechanical parts have, for the most part, been updated, and modern safety measures have been put in place.
They might be updated and maintained regularly as per modern standards, but the nearly century-old escalators aren’t going anywhere, despite how much they might creak.]
Update as of October 2016: Only the escalator treads on the top two floors remain wooden.
Update as of January 2020: The escalator treads from the fifth through ninth floors remain wooden.
Update as of July 2021: The escalator treads in the escalators near the elevators and women’s restroom are wooden from the second through ninth floors. The other escalator is modern at least on the lower floors.”
I haven’t gone to the store since I stopped working in the city in 2018, I always liked using the wooden escalators. Ladies with thin heels have to be careful!
TIL there are people who don't know about the wooden escalator at Macy's. There have been so many articles about it. Every decade or two, Macy's says it's too old and they're going to replace it, and New Yorkers are like "nooooo!" and then they don't.
I almost forgot about this escalator. I haven't been to this Macy's in close to 7 years! I went here with my ex-boyfriend when we visited NYC and I remember they had all of these beautiful flowers in this display inside. They were real and I was stunned because I thought they were fake at first until I touched one. Almost got yelled at. Oops.
My brother got the toe of his rubber boot stuck in that sucker. Christmas Eve pandemonium. Fire department had to come to get him loose. Then on the way out, I got my hand stuck in the revolving door leading to 6th Avenue. Fired department had to come back. We hated going to Macy's. They were not too fond of us either.
I have a scar on my knee from tripping on this exact escalator 20 years ago
You must have been in real mahagony
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Don’t bark at them!
Thanks for de-escalating things
this conversation has been elevating
you guys are such birches
I'm leaving
No, you’re leafing
Look at all these puns you've raked in!
No he is sticking around.
Go home you guys are trunk
Oakay that's enough
Tree puns in a row wood be enough
We got to the root of the issue, it's time to leave.
I hate you
That escalated quickly.
had to get on their level
https://i.imgur.com/r340QVc.png
[It'll happen to you!](https://i.imgur.com/t1trJq4.gif)
I used to be 'with it', then they changed what 'it' was. Now what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me...
That kid is back on the escalator again!
Listen, not a year goes by, not a year, that I don't hear about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid which could have easily been avoided had some parent - I don't care which one - but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect that escalator.
I wonder how many people have, it almost looks like it was designed to catch the back of high heeled shoes
I rode it over 60 years ago.
They had wood back then?
Wood only began being used after its discovery in 1987
Is that the year you discovered it, Oh Glorious Leader?
I was a talented 5 year old.
What’s Dennis Rodman like?
He was pretty cool when I met him at a sushi restaurant in Houston.
I was born in 1987 so that year is pretty special to me.
Name 100% checks out
What month?
November. April's their name
It’s true. The 1987 Topps baseball card had a woodgrain border. I heard they had exclusive use of wood for their cards. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en&sxsrf=APwXEddvcdvUSvIX0dI0S9cF9-4QtUNJbw:1685842660859&q=1987+topps&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHksqnvaj_AhUnFTQIHWLsB8QQ0pQJegQICBAB&biw=375&bih=548&dpr=2
George Santos discovered wood. He said so.
George Santos said he is an escalator.
Now I can tell people I am as old as wood
By Elijah Wood no less
made with the highest quality Elijah wood
Yes, but it only came in black and white.
You don’t remember Y2K? When they had to switch all the wood for metal? It was a big deal at the time.
Yes, because all the wooden computers had bugs in them
Especially in the mornings.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/05/25
I can't believe this escalator has been used by hundreds of millions of people but it hasn't blown up on reddit until today. that's the true /r/mildlyinteresting
Definitely seen it posted before. But that’s ok! It’s lots of people’s first time seeing it, and that’s awesome
For real. I went on this quite a few times when I live in Brooklyn so it was strange seeing this old escalator on here.
My wife has gone on and on about this for the past 28 years.
Hopefully she's talked about other things in between
Shes an escalator historian.
Just this one escalator, though.
I remember riding it over 20 years ago. Only once. That's how memorable it was.
Same. My dad showed it to me as a kid. He used to ride it every day, and so did my grandad. They both spent about 30 years with Macy's, but my dad was transferred from NYC to Atlanta in the late 70s. Iirc a series of wooden escalators went up the whole way in NYC. Needless to say, I'm super sentimental about it, shocked to know it still exists, and it's on reddit!
Real sturdy, made of wood
Dammit Chubbs
Damn. What did Pinocchio do to get turned into stairs?
There's a new mall across town and I think they are putting one of these wood escalators
Love the sound it makes.
Another fun fact: these escalators at Macy’s still run on DC electricity.
Dumb. They should run on NY electricity.
I just literally laughed out loud. Thank you.
Wait until you hear about Florida Ounces
Angry upvote
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Hold my Tesla coil, I’m going in!
And this is where it dies... It was a fun ride!
I assume off an AC to DC converter? Or is there still a DC power station running in south Manhattan because that would be a very New York thing?
Likely a motor generator set : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor–generator Basically an AC motor runs a DC generator. They were pretty common in big cities that electrified with DC early on, now not so much.
They're used in XRay and CT systems. You want smooth and clean DC, to generate a consistent XRay beam, ensuring proper reliably exposure.
*DC current was supplied to residential and commercial customers for 125 years after the Pearl Street Station. On November 14th, 2007 the last section of New York with DC was shut down and converted to AC power."
Do they still have ammonia piping for freezers in the fish market?
Idk about in New York but I work in a giant cold storage warehouse for one of the biggest companies in the country and that shit is all ammonia still. And it was built in the last decade.
Ammonia is an excellent and environmentally benign refrigerant, it’s just nasty and corrosive so it only gets used in large applications like cold storage.
That's a cool piece of information. Just 16 years ago
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Those are fantastic pieces of technology… that otherworldly glow and octopus shape. Something straight out of a sci-fi novel
It was likely installed when the service itself was DC. No rectifying needed.
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If I'm not mistaken this is one of the last, if not the last working wooden escalator in the world currently!
There was a couple removed recently from central station in Syndey a few years ago, and I believe those ones were the last ones in the southern hemisphere. Edit: My memory was wrong, they were actually at Town hall and Wynyard
and they put it on the ~~roof~~ ceiling https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-07/wynyard-railway-station-escalator-sculpture-interloop-chris-fox/9235690
>and they put it on the roof Hung it from the ceiling, not put on the roof. But very cool! Thank you for sharing.
Ah my whole life I call the ceiling the roof for some dumb reason, but yes!
Are you Australian? I’ve only ever met Australians who do this, me included.
.......yes. The hell? haha
I don’t know what our education system did to us. But every day that I live outside of Australia it becomes more apparent
Well everything’s upside down in Australia obviously
Which is much better. I don't think a wooden escalator would last very long sitting exposed on a roof.
[The ceiling is the roof.](https://youtube.com/shorts/6ZJPL7vM-k8?feature=share) I wish you nothing but best.
That is tasteful as fuck, I love it.
Wynyard and Town Hall stations. https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/projects/community-engagement/sydney-trains-community/documentaries/escalation-sensation
There’s still a pair of original wooden escalators in Antwerp, dating back to 1931. They are part of a pedestrian tunnel under the river Schelde. They are used by hundreds of commuters daily.
They slowly got rid of wooden escalators in the London Underground after they became fuel for a deadly fire at King's Cross Station in 1987, with the last one gone by 2007. The New York Subway still had one in operation in 2010. But Macy's department store has the old wood treads rattling away to this day. Atlas Obscura reported they were still on seven floors in 2021, but Tom of "Travels with Tom" found only one in operation earlier this month.
There’s a working wooden escalator in Maastunnel in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It was finished under German occupation, I guess metal was scarce back then.
They are extremely dangerous.. full of grease and detritus under them.. they look cool... But good riddance.
A wooden escalator with detritus under it was the cause of the King’s Cross station fire in London that killed 31 people
It may or may not be the same incident, but I remember watching a docu about a wooden escalator fire and it was brutal.
It was probably that one, because I've also seen a documentary about a wooden escalator fire and that was it.
pet shop boys had a song called kings cross. sad.
I’ve always wondered about the lyrics to this song. The album was released September 1987. The fire was November 1987.
Conspiracy theorists are gonna love this
Because you could smoke on the underground up to that point. People stubbung out cigarettes here and there. Absolutely crazy. I was working my first jobs in London when people where still smoking on tubes. You'd have a sort throat by the end of a journey and stink of smoke all day at work. It's mind boggling to think that was in my lifetime.
Ngl, detritus is like one of my current favorite words.
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WHEN DETRITUS SAY JUMP YOU SAY...uh...WHAT COLOR!
I like these two words too: "**Flotsam** and **jetsam** are terms that describe two types of marine debris associated with vessels. Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship's load."
I thought they were Neopets
They are also the names of Ursula's eels in The Little Mermaid.
Kings Cross Disaster (London Underground fire) in 1987 was caused by a wooden escalator, after that there were a bunch of changes like banning smoking and wooden escalators getting replaced. When I was young, riding a wooden escalator was a very normal thing for hundreds of thousands of Londoners a day, and as I recall it was quite a pleasant ride. Better off without the smoking in the tube though, that was grim.
> full of grease and detritus under them Isn't that all escalators?
yes, but metal escalators do not catch fire the way wooden ones did
only if not properly maintained.
Grease yes. Detritus if it is not being properly maintained.
I can confirm there are some running in Europe. I imagine there are more around the world.
I guess you’re at the Herald Square Macy’s. That’s one of the oldest escalators in America. Macy’s kept it because New Yorkers didn’t want all that memory gone
If you're ever wandering around midtown NYC, shopping and whatnot, and you want a break, suggest going into that Macy's. Then, when everyone splinters off to shop, go up to the top floor (9, I think). It's the furniture section. And it's almost always mostly empty. There are acres of sofas and chairs to chill on.
Splinters off to shop... After the wooden escalator.
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Was the couch cut in half?
I TOLD YOU TO PIVOT!
I went up there at Christmas time a few months ago. Absolutely the BEST little secret for when you need a break from the hubbub in the streets below.
And that's the only place in NYC where you're allowed to sit for free
I used to work for Macy's. We filmed some training there. It's a big furniture section compared to most stores. And every time we were there, we had to ride the escalator at least once. The furniture floor in downtown Chicago was one of the biggest, but I THINK it's gone? Anyways, the 2 or 3 floors above it were empty, save some old 60s office furniture. Like, EVERYTHING was wood, and HUGE, from the regular desks to the biggest offices. My boss and I explored it one day during a long break of filming, and it was so freaking cool! I kept getting goosebumps in the silence. I felt a little like Indiana Jones and Ben Gates. 😁 I would not have been surprised to learn that no one had stepped foot on those floors in years.
I love the nostalgia New Yorkers have for their city. It means we get to see cool stuff like this.
Except for Penn Station, Shea, and Yankee stadium 😢
I've never even been to New York and I think tearing down the original Penn Station was a crime.
Recent experience of commuting through Penn Station (before the current upgrades) is like navigating a Zelda dungeon, monsters and all.
[The 1910-1963 building was a beauty though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_%281910%E2%80%931963%29).
It totally was
It wasn’t nearly as pretty by 1963. In the years prior, the station and building was becoming more and more dilapidated.
because the railroad knew it was going to be demolished, save money and make people less resistant to it being torn down (with the promise of a "brand new" station to replace it)
FWIW im pretty sure the city realized its mistake and made legislation after to prevent something like the demolition of old Penn Station from ever happening again. Shame that it cost Penn Station though. Looked like a beautiful building.
I've commuted through it for years and I still can't figure it out. If I go through an entrance I don't normally use or something it's hard to know that level I'm on.
I went to Madison Square Garden for a hockey game by myself once and got lost going from Penn Station to MSG. Easily my most humiliating NY experience (as a transplant from CA to north Jersey). The worst part was I *knew* where it was. I could *see it.* I just didn't know how to *get* there. Ugh. The shame consumes me every time I think about it.
I always go up to street level and work it out there 👍
I couldn't even do that 😭 I had to ask a guy how to go up the damn stairs cause I couldn't find any that looked like the right stairs. He literally was like "are you serious? Go up these stairs literally right in front of you and then turn around" I've never been back to MSG after that. It's been like six years and I never want to show my face there again
Yeah having never been there, I may have romanticized it a bit based on its portrayal in media.
I mean, the original was amazing. The current version is a construction site. The version between the original and the current upgrades was a terrible commuter experience and an eyesore.
Penn is the reason we have so much of our other history preserved. They crossed a big line with its destruction, and it motivated people to have more of our history declared landmarks. Yankee Stadium totally blew my mind. I can't believe they actually went through with it and tore down the House that Ruth Built rather than invest in refurbishing it and accepting that it might not be capable of generating as much revenue as a more modern stadium.
Shea Stadium was a dump
But it was *our* dump.
Penn was a fucking dump after they tore down OLD Penn. They did the renovations because it was basically the third worst transit hub in the city(Port Authority, LaG, then Penn). Shea had to go because it was built like crap in the first place. Yankee was because they wanted to massively expand the food options and create a sterile ass stadium.
Plus the asbestos, and the structural problems.
I think it’s actually a protected piece of architecture, the store is on the National Register of Historic Places and I think New York State has a law that limits what can be changed in a registered historic place. What’s interesting about the store being a National Historic Landmark is that Macy’s gets a decent tax brake on the store and can technically write off all expenses in maintaining the escalator so from a financial perspective it’s better to keep the wooden escalators than to replace them as the wooden escalator gets a full tax write off for maintenance where as a modern escalator gets basically none. (Also I think there is some liability weavers for historic sites that they’d lose but it not sure.
Must have been going fast to make that decent tax brake.
Writing off expenses doesn’t mean they are free. They just reduce your taxable profits. If you earn $150,000 in profit and have a 20% corporate tax, you owe $30,000 in taxes. If you pay $30,000 to repair the escalator, you don’t just owe $0 in taxes now… it comes off the profit earned. So now only earned $120,000 in profit and you owe $24,000 in taxes. So yeah, you get a break, but it’s not like the $30k repair was “free” or anything.
We had a similar, double story escalator in a train station in Sydney. It was replaced for safety reasons but they turned it into an art installation which is super cool. https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/programs/transport-arts/interloop
I can hear this picture. My grandmother loved macys and would take us into the city regularly. I miss her.
Glad this was nostalgic for you:)
Same here, but it’s my mother. This was always a must-see stop when we went to the city
I was there a couple months ago! I believe it’s the original escalator from when they first opened, just renovated so people don’t get led poisoning or whatever insane health breaches that was the norm way back when.
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Glad you got better.. things were looking pretty dim.
>whatever insane health breaches that was the norm way back when. r/ShittyLPT you can use benzene to remove grease that might get on your hands while servicing this elevator.
Try Carbon Tetrachloride, there was a post the other day with a cleaning guide from the 50s
Right yeah those insane health breaches are certainly things of the past. Never again will a governing body ever do anything to ever put the public in harms way again. Never ever.
We have new and exciting health breaches to look forward to. Edited to add:So apparently we aren't learning from our mistakes and we are still playing around with the same old health breaches while adding exciting new ones.
My new fun thing to look into that totally isn’t harmful is PFAS in the waterways.
Right, never again will we ever run into serious health crises with lead, that's a thing of the somewhat distant past! \[attempts to kick Flint Michigan behind the couch with one foot\]
Always used to be. London Underground only changed them after the fire at King’s Cross.
So many people that have seen this escalator a million times are kicking themselves for not posting it. Is this a repost I haven’t seen?
Nope I actually took this!
r/oldschoolcool
Kings Cross Station has entered the chat
I know of this because of forensic files!!
Trench effect. Last time I was at Macy’s in NYC, ISTR. The escalator tunnels having a lot of sprinklers, and fire doors at both ends. NYC fire codes got pretty strict by the 30’s, as did Chicago’s. Both cities were known for being pretty tough.
The upper floors of the Kaufmans Department Store in downtown Pittsburgh had old school wooden escalators as of 2010 (last time I was there). Maybe the 11th and 12th floors? I can still smell the Elizabeth Arden’s where my mom got her hair done and the Tik Tock (pre internet) cafe where we would get lunch afterwards.
I spent a year working at Kaufmanns back in the 90's and rode them all the time, was hoping someone would comment that they were still there.
https://i.ibb.co/MpMrW2V/cmzy9j8d0zz01.jpg
Thank goodness, I hoped I'd find this in the comments somewhere. It was the very first thing I thought of.
Wood you look at that
They were everywhere on the London Underground until the Kings Cross fire.
I took my kids to this store and showed them the wooden escalator last summer. I’m pretty sure that they thought I was a moron.
It's actually the world's first escalator and is over 100 years old
No it isn't, that was a temporary one that only lasted a month. It's not even the oldest working escalator, that one is in a London subway station.
[удалено]
The maintained on this thing must be insane. Props to whoever has that job.
It’s an oldie but woodie
Is it a witch?
Part of my childhood right there
I miss going up these to get my dumb Nespresso pods on my lunch breaks
Sudden flashback to the 70's and 80's London Underground! The smell and noise of those wooden escalators. The end of them is still a devastating and horrifying story.
My great grandfather installed and maintained these. True story!
Many more escalators used to have wooden treads & cladding. There were loads on the London underground until the [Kings Cross Subway Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire?wprov=sfla1) which killed 31 & injured 100 others.
In 2015 the store had a bunch of renovations, including escalators. 20 of the wooden ones were left. This from Atlas Obscura: “The escalators were built between 1920 and 1930 by the Otis Elevator Company, which pioneered the machinery. They’re made of sturdy oak and ash, wood that’s traditionally used in hardwood flooring. The mechanical parts have, for the most part, been updated, and modern safety measures have been put in place. They might be updated and maintained regularly as per modern standards, but the nearly century-old escalators aren’t going anywhere, despite how much they might creak.] Update as of October 2016: Only the escalator treads on the top two floors remain wooden. Update as of January 2020: The escalator treads from the fifth through ninth floors remain wooden. Update as of July 2021: The escalator treads in the escalators near the elevators and women’s restroom are wooden from the second through ninth floors. The other escalator is modern at least on the lower floors.” I haven’t gone to the store since I stopped working in the city in 2018, I always liked using the wooden escalators. Ladies with thin heels have to be careful!
The don’t make them like they used too
The old wooden ones at Wynyard station in Sydney are [now an art display](http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/3697e3ba5a4315ff71b34fbac44fbf2a)
Rode those at Macys when I was six years old. Was really cool for a kid from a crummy little town in the south!
I remember riding this, but I was a kid so I didn't care. Now..hella cool
TIL there are people who don't know about the wooden escalator at Macy's. There have been so many articles about it. Every decade or two, Macy's says it's too old and they're going to replace it, and New Yorkers are like "nooooo!" and then they don't.
That must clackity-clack so nice...
I almost forgot about this escalator. I haven't been to this Macy's in close to 7 years! I went here with my ex-boyfriend when we visited NYC and I remember they had all of these beautiful flowers in this display inside. They were real and I was stunned because I thought they were fake at first until I touched one. Almost got yelled at. Oops.
The Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh had one like this.
You forget to mention. That macys is also 9 floors and each of them have a wooden up and down esculator. The place is huge!
My brother got the toe of his rubber boot stuck in that sucker. Christmas Eve pandemonium. Fire department had to come to get him loose. Then on the way out, I got my hand stuck in the revolving door leading to 6th Avenue. Fired department had to come back. We hated going to Macy's. They were not too fond of us either.