Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / Inside the Elevator Museum: Preserving 150 Years of Elevator Industry History | Steve Comley

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Inside the Elevator Museum: Preserving 150 Years of Elevator Industry History | Steve Comley · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people leave here with a real understanding, you know, they didn't have before, you know, a real education.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Even even they didn't even elevator guys come here.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've learned a lot over the years myself by being in the museum and people bringing me artifacts that I've never seen before and explaining to me how they worked and what their functions were and stuff and how they've changed over the years.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And these are things I bring to the table with people when they come here to see me.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it it works.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: It really helps.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I like people leave here with a great understanding of it.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and I've and I love it because the people under know when they leave here that they get a little bit of education.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: They know where the elevator, you know, industry came from and how important it is.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I'm a little biased because I spent my whole life doing this, but you know, it's one of the greatest trades in the world, and uh, I've always felt that way.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and we're gonna we're gonna make this happen and preserve for for others to see someday.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Matt Allred.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, we talk to the people whose lives and careers are dedicated to the vertical transportation industry, to inform and share lessons learned, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before to inspire the next generation of elevator careers.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today our guest is Steve Comley, president of the Elevator Museum in Amesbury, Massachusetts.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Steve grew up in the industry with his father working at Payne Elevator, and Steve joined the company when he was 18 years old and worked 43 years as a mechanic.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Steve has a passion for all things elevator-related and has collected many artifacts from the trade.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: In 2018, Steve started the Elevator Museum as a way to preserve our past and elevate our future.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Steve, welcome to the show.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Matt.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing great.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here with me today.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to get to talk to you a little bit more.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, I want to talk about where you're sitting.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You I believe you call it the Elevator Museum.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Elevator Museum we have here.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh one of the only ones in the world that I know of.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it started off down in uh New York with Patrick Carr.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I joined with him in 2011, and uh I went down there as one of the uh directors of the museum down there with him, and then in 2016 he actually closed up the museum and uh we brought it up here.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome, awesome.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk more about that in just a second.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious how how did you get your start in the elevator industry?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've been around elevators my whole life, Mike.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: My father worked for Paint Elevator, and I uh he uh he started in uh in actually 1950.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's been in the elevator trade his whole life.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So when he was a uh he was a he was a service uh tech up in uh Lowell.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was like 10 years old, I used to go out on trouble calls with him at nighttime.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I still remember getting on the elevator in the old freight cars, and he'd be on top of the car and he'd go run up and I run up and run back down, run back down, run up again.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: He'd be playing with switches and stuff on top of the elevator.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember as a kid, and I always like I always thought it was pretty neat.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Dad, when are we getting out of here?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: He'd say, Well, uh keep it up and I'll buy you an ice cream on the way home, you know.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I get paid into it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and then in uh 1974, he bought Embryon White, okay, which was fantastic.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh 14 years old at the time, and and when I went down to the shop, they had used to say on the side of it, um elevators and mill rights.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember seeing my dad, I said, What is a mill right, you know?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was uh his shop that he purchased in 1974 was uh a millwright and an elevator shop from 1873.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of the oldest in the country.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they had the old flat belt pulleys coming from the ceiling, and they were always flapping when we go in there.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And first time I went in there, it was awe-inspiring to me.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was just a young guy, and I went in there and and uh they had all the flat belt pulleys coming from the ceiling.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember going over by the lid, and my father's oh, watch out for all those metal filings, you get cut off now.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go near the lid and near the belts.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the guys over there welding the corner, don't go over there, you get blinded by the arc welding, and and the guys over there pouring Babbitt, they're pulling guide shoes and making some sh- you know, something over there with the Babbitt tanks, and it's awful hot, and you get burnt, and you know, don't go over there and don't go over here, watch out for the grease and the oil.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was I love the shop, it was fantastic.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a bit a dangerous place to work, you know what I mean?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Kenny Embry worked with my dad for years and they had all the flatbelt pulleys.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: He used to talk about as a kid when he first started there with the other guys, and they didn't want to shut, you know, the all the belts ran off of like one motor.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so to to change speeds of his lathe, he used to, you know, they wanted to have him stick his arm up in the belt and and switch the up to the next speed.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when he was a young kid, the old oh it was crazy.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, No, I'm not doing that, you know.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Kenny was a Kenny was a good guy, and he uh he worked with my dad for years.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: He said, No, I'm not gonna do that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he'd shut the machines all down.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: The guy, the old guys get mad at the old timers.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: He, you know, they stick his arm up there and they boom, they bump the belt up.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: You just watch out for the where the connection was on the leather belts with it and catch you and rip you up into the ceiling, you know.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: Gosh.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they they yeah, it was it was an interesting place to work, you know.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I get out of high school, I started working there with them.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Did you did you ever think that you would go somewhere else or do something?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, did you always want to be in the elevator industry?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, I didn't.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I did it because of my dad, you know, and I loved it, you know.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: But when I when they when I went down there, we used to uh when I was just a kid, we used to go uh in the back of his machine shop and we would take the big elevator drum machines that were back there and we would smash them all up with a sledgehammer and put them in the back of a dump truck, uh back of a pickup truck, and we bring them down to the scrapyard on weekends, and that was my money.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I used to get my dad would give me the money for that.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I remember just being as even as a kid looking at these old drum machines, and I was fascinated by them.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and it's weird because I was one of the ones that, you know, I'm now trying to save them back then.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I destroyed them.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I literally broke them up with sledgehammers, and I say my dad, I go, geez, these things, nobody even sees these things, you know, these are incredible, incredible pieces of equipment.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd say, Why don't we keep some?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember telling me, he said, Stevie, there's nothing, you can't do anything with them.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: The drum machines are illegal, they're too heavy to move around, nobody wants them, you know.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you see uh firefighters, you know, uh museums in every town you go into because you can keep the old fire trucks around and you can clean them back up, but right nobody saves old dumbbells, nobody saves old elevator machines or parts or anything, you know.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the guys collect things like I have over the years, car switches and hall stations and different things, you know.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: You bring home, and that's that's how I got if you wanted to get into it one time, is to have a museum one day because it had so many different things, you know.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, how how old were you when you actually started as a full-time employee with with your dad?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is where it sounds like you started 18.
• 6:53
  unknown: Okay.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Moved right in, started working at it all.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now you were telling me some time ago about how how you uh at that shop, and maybe because you know that you worked on older machines, right?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: That it that it wasn't just uh that you would work on things that other people wouldn't touch.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the reason for that was in the 80s, they uh we were we Ember Membury White was a non-union elevator company.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um always was like one of the largest and one of the oldest non-union companies for the longest time up till 1995.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: But in the 80s, when I worked with my dad, all the big chops, Otis and Tyson, all the big companies uh um would they get rid of all the old elevators.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: They said either you're gonna modernize these elevators, the old flat belt stuff and the hatch doors and the shipper rope elevators and the real old dinosaurs, you know, we're gonna get rid of all you you guys, and you know, there's nobody gonna be out there to take care of you.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't true.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: We were out there and we took care of all the old stuff, you know.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when I look back, I had some friends that I got in the trade and they were, they would use, they would flip out, they'd be like, Stevie, your dad's company's horrible, you know.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're working on all the old junk, and you know, he says a bunch of gladiators out here working on the dinosaurs and making fun of it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: We'd be adjusting flat belt pulleys and fixing hatch doors and you know, the real old stuff that I've missed to this day, you know what I mean?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was dependable, reliable old stuff.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would always you could always get it going.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: I never had a problem with it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you know, you go in an elevator now and you you're gonna get PC board going, you could wait three weeks for it to get it fixed.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, back then you go in there with a hammer and a screwdriver and a couple tools and off to the races, you know.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think do you think that working on that older equipment helped help fuel your your interest in in the museum that you have today?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I really miss all the old stuff and I just feel like it just it disappeared and it still disappears like crazy.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's stuff all over the place, you know, that's uh hidden in the walls.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh I know a lot of places like in Manchester and Have Lawrence, uh up in here in Massachusetts that are uh in New Hampshire where you know there's old machines up on the roof that are still there because it's expensive all over the place.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: All over the place.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because they don't they don't have the time or the money to take out these old machines.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, an old an old uh warehouse building that you know had you know two or three freight elevators in and the penthouses and drum machines were up on the roof, and they call an elevator company like, well, why don't you leave that old dinosaur right there and decommission it and we'll add another hoist way here and put a hydraulic in or something new in, and the old stuff would stay right there on the building because nobody wanted to pay to get rid of it, you know.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of stuff out there still in the walls, you know.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um how long did you work with with your your dad's company and what did your where did your career go from there?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I worked my dad's company up uh until 2013.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I worked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and I was uh the local the resident, the local uh resident mechanic up there for uh 28 years.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I just retired this November, past November.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I was up there for uh 28 years at the base, but I worked for in the trade for 43 years.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: But 10 years ago, they uh they awarded, um, they took the contract and they gave it out to a big conglomerate company that said you'll be in charge of the elevators, you'll be in charge of the boilers, you'll be in charge of doors and windows, rooftop gutters, and all this really all kinds of different things.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I became a union elevator mechanic with that company, but I was the only union guy that worked for the company.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was it was a really unique situation.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a lot of elevators.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: I worked in the on the you know an island off the coast of Maine, the Portsmouth Navy, they had all the nuclear submarines up there.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was really a great place to work.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I had I had the best, you know, I had the best seat in the house.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had all the penthouses up on the roof looking out over the ocean when it wasn't too busy.
• 10:45
  unknown: Nice.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you said you had all the elevators there.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I had 50 elevators on the base.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a lot of elevators, but they were all in very weird positions.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had dry dark freight elevators that would go right down 35 feet of my elevator shaft would get flooded with ocean water.
• 11:01
  unknown: Wow.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was really bizarre.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to pull the limit switches and stuff up.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: They had it set up so that everything was like on SJ cords.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I go down, I pull the limit switches up, the pit switches up, the interlocks, the hall stations, and pull them up the shaft, and and then you know, they flood the dock, and next thing you know, I'd have seaweed hanging off my doors, and you know it was different.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a different type of setup.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is that is unique.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so uh how did you get involved?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean you mentioned uh Patrick Carr and kind of you know getting involved with the with his museum, but it sounds like you already had your own collection going on.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly did.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I actually tried to start a museum.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: I lived in Haver, Massachusetts, and I went down to the Historical Society and I had a whole bunch, I had a couple hundred old plots and stuff, but I always knew I could get the big things because they were all out there.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't have a place to put them.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I always knew they were in shafts and walls and people were throwing them out all the time.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't think that would be a hard thing to get.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the Hysterical Society, I call it Hysterical Society because they were, you know, they didn't they didn't care, they didn't help me, you know, they were like, Yeah, you you open it, we'll come.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, give me well, get it, give me a building, help me, you know.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that part became very hard.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what I did is I tried to uh I I really looked into it for a little bit in 2009 and I kind of let it go.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And but I had a whole bunch of uh car switches and things that some of them are on the back over here that I took out myself, and even like my wife would uh would uh I'd have it at home and she's like, get that thing out of the house here, you know.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of old elevator things are not very, you know, eye-appealing.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I didn't get the keyboard.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: The eye of the beholder.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I know some people make the old car switches, they make light switches out of them, and people make they take the the bronze gears and make glass tables and stuff, and you know, so I always wanted to try to do something more with it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder really where we make a museum.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: I knew there were none out there, I thought it'd be a great idea.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So then I get a little frustrated, so I call I went online and I looked up Elevated Museum, and Patrick Carr started in 2011 and uh in New York, and I think I get in a whole I called the number of those on the phone, and he answered the phone, he said his dad's been doing his whole life, and I said, My dad's been doing the whole life, and I've been doing my whole life, and he did his whole life.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we had a lot in common.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I'd really like to, you know, uh be part of your museum.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to help you out.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to go, but I don't want to just give you all my stuff.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I want to be part of it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Sure.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So he said, bring all your stuff down, and I'll come up and get some stuff from you.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh uh, he said, I'll make you one of the directors of the museum.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was tickle-pinked, I loved it.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then and uh I went down there to see him one time and I was a little taken back because he had a consultant business and he sold parts and he had uh he had uh tons and tons of small parts, you know, and and and things that he collected for his museum.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when I went into the his place, I just was a little taken back because it really wasn't what I pictured as a museum, you know.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I picture like Smithsonian with it, you know, like a beautiful display case and everything set up and tagged and labeled.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, to me that that was a museum.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when I saw his stuff and all it was, I was like, Patrick, this looks like the back of my old man's shop.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean you got a bunch of old pots with this in the boxes, this and that.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't really have display cases and stuff, but he had a lot of stuff, and he's a great guy, and he was a lot of help.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then 2016, I was a little discouraged because I went down there.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I said, Can I come down on a weekend?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: My me and my dad will we'll uh we'll run the museum and we'll you know give people tours and walk them around.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Well, we don't really open, we don't really do it like that.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: He says I'm like, What do you mean you don't do it like that?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do you when do you open?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so he he said, I just uh when people call up and they want to look at it, I open them up.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hmm, that's interesting.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So 2016, he called me up and said, Steve, I'm close to museum.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't have enough support for it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I want all my stuff back, please.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Steve, you're the only guy that's ever helped me with anything.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I'll give you a bunch of stuff.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you, I'll give it all of you.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, You're kidding me?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, all right.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually hooked up uh with local four in Boston and we we we brought everything up from local to local four and we put it in their uh meeting room.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Our meeting room holds, you know, right now we have 1,300 members in our meeting, you know, in our uh local four in Boston.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a big, huge meeting room, and I lined the walls with all this stuff.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: I bought really nice display cases, and I spent the time to buy little easels and I bought little plastic pieces to stand up everything, and I wanted everything in the cabinet so you could see it, and I want it cleaned and I wanted it right, and it was really good.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um kind of turned the the the meeting hall into the the museum, as it were, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I did, I did, but there was a problem with it, and that was uh I had literally had Time Magazine call me up one day and said, Steve, can we come down?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear you get a museum, LA Museum, and we'd like to take a look at it and take some pictures and meet you with you.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm said, sure.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Where is it?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, it's local forum, Boston, Dorchester, uh meeting hall.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Is it your meeting?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's at your union hall, and I go, Yeah.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Well, that's not open to the public, is it?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, no, but I got the keys in the place.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he says, Come on down.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: But it didn't matter.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: They were they were adamant about, well, that's not public place, that's not a public building, so we're not gonna do it.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to invite the public if if you can't, I guess, have access to it.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, exactly.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they they they put it as like a you know, that's like your local four's museum and your exhibit, not really an public exhibit.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And they were right.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a couple years later, after, you know, in uh 2018, we you know, they had a little discussion down there.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting too much stuff in the museum.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had big stuff, and they like to have functions, they like to have Christmas parties and different things where they bring the kids in, and then there was a problem with because I had some things open on the shelves and stuff, and I wasn't there with the Christmas party, so it was really turned into a thing where like, Steve, you gotta you get you're getting too big, you gotta go find a home.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta find a home on your own.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, which is kind of the way we worked it.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the local helped me start an elevator historical society, which I started.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: We got some guys involved, and we got some money together, and we moved out, and we moved to Haver, Massachusetts, and we rented like three little rooms, and then we got bigger, we rented four rooms.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: We kept breaking through the walls and getting bigger and bigger, and you know, but um it wasn't uh I I didn't care for the location that we were in.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had a really nice article that was written about us that came down to the museum, and they you know, a guy came in and wrote a really nice article, but but he posted in there or wrote in there, he says, Yo, Steve's got this great museum, and it's hidden in the back and in bottom, and you know, you make it sound like it was out and you know, behind a dumpster somewhere.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: His description of it.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Jesus crack it, you talk the place up, and he said, hidden in the walls and back in the corner in the middle, you know, like oh silly just and it but he was describing it correctly, you know, it really was in a very good location.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then last year we were uh really looking.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I had so much more stuff.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I got a little support from the uh the a lot of support from the international and the locals around the country, and uh they love the museum.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we got some money up and we came up to Amesbury.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm in this building right here that I'm in right now, and it's from 1870, it's an old mill building, and so it's the exact decor that we were looking for.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's got the you know the wood floors, the wood ceilings, got the brick walls, and and it's really nice.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: They got a brewery on the first floor too, which is you know advantageous to all of us when we have it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had a busload of uh when we first get in here.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I had uh 12 guys come up on a big bus from New York, a bunch of uh local 35 guys and local one guys, and uh they came up from New York and they parked the the bus outside and they came in and said, Steve, can we use the brewery downstairs?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, I go, but you gotta go down to the elevator on the first floor and you go down to the brewery.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: I said, You're really not supposed to bring the stuff, but the guys really know what we're doing up here and they're nice.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I know the guys at the brewery says, so I had you know, I I think it was 14 of them actually, and I remember standing here talking to two of them in the museum.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I turn around and they says, I go, Well, we go down there.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I said, just go down a couple at a time, go down there and just you know, come back up.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm talking to them, I turn around, and the other 12 guys are gone.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Oh boy, here we go.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Next thing you know, they all come walking through the door.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's 12 of them, they all get drinks in the hand, and the the owner of the bar is in in tow.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, here we go.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was excited, probably, right?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, he was very happy with the he was he was happy with the busload, the guy's buying his beers, and he came up and he said, Steve, he goes, All these guys with you, and like, yes, they are.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I said, You know, are we all right there with that?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Sure.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I'll come up and get all the beers, I'll get all the glasses.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I said, No, you won't, because they're going right back down on the beginning.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So he was happy about it, and it's been it's been a great place up here, you know.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: We love it.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I love I'm just just looking behind you.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, tell us about this piece that's directly behind you.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: You were telling me a little bit about it uh before the control panel right here.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the there's I see a a guy in a blue jacket sitting on a some kind of load.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, to me it looks like a big old elevator.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, it is an elevator.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um, there's a couple things.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I put a couple things behind me here for on purpose.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the control panel, right to my to your left.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: My left, I guess I look in the mirror here, is uh from uh Mary Baker Eddie's home, her castle in Chestnut Hill in Boston that is in pristine condition.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: She, like I said, it was installed in 1908, she died in 1910, and it basically never ever operated.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day they called me up and said, Do you want this thing?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Absolutely.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we went down and got that.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: But that it's an ABC control panel, it's in literally like brand new.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and behind that was uh the the freight elevator that you're looking at with the guy sitting on it, that's from uh that's from the 1890s.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was a flat belt pulley machine that had these big pulleys that used to run it, and uh it had hatch doors, the hatch doors open and the car would go up through the floor, and on the bottom of it, it's got the in the front of it instead of having a toe guide, it had these warning chains.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And warning chains are basically in the factory because uh the a lot of the factories just had like a little bar that would go across the hoistways to keep you falling down the hatch.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so the little warning chains would uh when you were guys were talking, they'd be sticking the head out in the hoistway, the chains would hit you in the top of the head until you get your head out of the way.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: You've been warned.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've been warned.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, so we get some primitive old stuff in here.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: What what about that piece of artwork I see on your right and to behind you?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that artwork is from is Westinghouse, is a Westinghouse Escalator painting from Westinghouse elevators, and that was in their corporate office in uh New York City.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a beautiful, it's uh I think it's a six by eight or six by ten painting.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a ten thousand dollar painting back in the back in the eighties.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a very, very nice painting.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, behind beside it, you'll see some uh pictures of those are all ink on linen drawings.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And those are given to us by George Gibson.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: He used to work for Otis Elevator, and uh he was one of the big wheels there.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: And back in 1978, they used to keep all their archives.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Otis used to keep all their archives in uh in Yonkers, New York, where basically they Where they started.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they had all these old drawings down there.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1978, they had a had uh all the sprinkle heads go off in the building and shoot water all over the prints and everything in the building, and pretty much just destroyed a lot of stuff except for the ink on linen drawings, which I actually have some of these right here.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I painted elevator.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Put that up just a little bit so we can see it in the camera.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's the ink on linen right there.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's ink on linen, and it actually feels like plastic.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's a it's a process which you know what they did years ago is everything was written on with with carbon and pencils, and and the carbon, when you had the paper and you'd flex it back and forth, the carbon would wear off.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So after no time at all, you couldn't read what was on the prints.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so when they decided that they had something that they really wanted to keep and they were going to remanufacture over and over again, they would do this process having ink on linen, and which was the taking of the print and putting it on top of a linen and tracing it all out in ink and as opposed to carbon.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem with that is if you made a mistake, it would bleed into the linen and you'd have to start all over again.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: There was no erasing it.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it was quite the process.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh George Gibson wrote a little article about it, and he he get we have it here in the museum, but he actually called me up when we had the museum, and he's down uh he's in Arizona.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Steve, he goes, I get some of these old elevator prints, and I have a I have a uh uh filing case here with with tons, I have hundreds and hundreds of old elevator prints and documents, and we have a we have a bookshelf with lots and lots of literature.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought he meant like, you know, every elevator machine you walk in in the cabinets, you can pull them open, you get you know 10 pages of all old prints and stuff like that, you know.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that's what he had.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Steve, I get some old prints, you want them?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I get tons of prints.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and he said, Steve, he goes, This is uh George Gibson remotors elevators.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, these are ink on linen drawings, these are proprietary, and you want these.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Okay, say no more.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he sent them up to me, and I certainly did want them because they're fantastic.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: They are they are you know, they're uh they are the originals, and they're if you look at them, you can tell that they've been worn and handled hundreds and hundreds of times.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Years ago, they didn't have printers, they didn't have uh copy machines, they certainly didn't have anything like that.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they didn't this is the only way that they you know you could visually see, and you could tell that these these drawings were you know, they were in regular drawing, you know, of boards that they would pull out and they'd take them out to the shops, but you could tell that the mechanics and the guys out in the field had or the guys in the you know in the okers would pull them out and play with them because they're all dirty, they're all grease stained, but they're the you can read every number on them.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they're so it sounds like once they put the the ink on the linen, it's it's gonna last forever.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, those are some old ones and they're still.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have uh and and it's remarkable because some of the things I've learned when I've been here is uh I have an oldest brother's from um uh 1883, and it shows how that they've machined and made these beautiful steel rails and how well they're made.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking at them, they look just like rails of today, you know, and that's from 1880, uh 1883, and and the dates on it, it blows my mind because I always thought everything was wooden rails back then.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that they had steel rails and stuff back then.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, uh, I've been in the trade a long time.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: I you know I don't go back to the the 1800s.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say yeah, that's uh that's uh a little bit before your day for sure.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's wonderful.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm just curious, what are what are some of the challenges of of keeping the the museum up uh up and running?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you you know charge people when they come or if it's if it's free to the to come, but then you need you know support from others, or how does that work?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've always uh we've always had people, you know, since we've opened, it's been like most museums.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's not a lot of traffic.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have functions here, which really, you know, we had a grand opening, we brought a bunch of guys from local for up.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had a little uh I had a retirement party, so we had all the retirees come here.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um the town of Amesbury has a big, huge car show where they take over the center of town, they have all the cars in town, so I had a party that day, and then I had a Christmas party.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I have functions that I try to bring people in here, but on the weekends, uh like now, even though we have a beautiful building, there's a brewery on the first floor, and a bunch of people down there, we have people that walk in and we get a little more because we just moved in in February of this year.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we just got back into this building, and I and I spent all summer.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: I work, I was working full-time at the Navy.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'd I was working, you know, my wife says she's uh married to a museum, she's a museum widow, she calls herself, because I'd come home from work, I'd grab my dog, and I'd run down the museum here, and I'd be down here 10, 11 o'clock at night, and I'd get up in the morning, go off to work all day, and I'd come here and I was here on weekends and nights, and I didn't miss many days here in 22 ever coming to the museum.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I spent thousands of hours and my time here trying to set the place up because even though we moved, uh it cost a lot to move, but the movers came in with boxes and they just threw it all on the floor and walked away.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of help getting it here, but nobody really helped me set everything up, you know what I mean?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a lot of work trying to get the place set up and going.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we we have people come here on the weekends, we charge them ten dollars a person, five bucks for seniors, and nothing for kids under 12.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so we make 20, 30 bucks and you know, on a day here and there, and you know, but it's certainly not the the 3100 bucks a month that we try to uh we pay a lease here.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: We have 2,500 square feet, and it's a beautiful building and beautiful spot.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the museum itself is doing great.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: The uh the finances for it is a little a little uh we're chasing the money all the time.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: So where do you get most of that that support from?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: What what uh the international.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: The international has been really good.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: The locals across the country, uh some you know, local four has been a lot of help to us, local two in Chicago has helped us out, local 18 out in Las Vegas, local eight out in San Francisco, 71 down in down in Miami, and um and uh I hate leaving anybody out, but we probably have about 15 guys that you know, the 15 locals that have helped us out.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a couple hundred locals out there, and uh all the guys have been here, a bunch of the guys have been here at different times, and now that we've really got a much nicer location, and I feel this really is.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you saw us in in Haverhill, we didn't have anywhere near this nice of a building and set up.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I always thought it was very you know important to have that.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I was growing, some of the guys like Steve, you know, don't get any more space, you know, we're not gonna be able to afford it.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you don't understand.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: The way I look at it, I look at it differently.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I need the place to look really nice, and I always compare it to uh Ripley's Believe It or Not.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I used to take my boys all the time to Ripley's Believe It or Not, they have the museum, so we go on vacation, we go down to Florida, you go to Ripley's Believe It Ornot, you walk in there, and it was like, wow, this place is cool.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you you'd walk around, you're in there for you know, 15, 20 minutes, you walk around this really big place, and then you see all those really weird things, and it was feels good.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: You walk out the door.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to Ripley, believe it or not, up in uh up by Niagara Falls one time, my boys.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's the one right over the border there.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you pay you 15 bucks, you walk in the door, and you literally walk in and right around a circle and right back out the door.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, What a ripoff! Like, what do you mean?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Well, and that's why you compared this to I says, Yeah, I don't want to bring people here from New York or from Pennsylvania or from people come up here and be like, Oh, I want to see the LO Museum.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: They walk in there, and there's like just so many, just so few things that you know, they're in and out in a couple minutes.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that was okay, but there's not enough there.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to have plenty of stuff here.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like I got a water hydro from 1890s, I got some hand-operated elevators from mansions, uh, you know, little hand-operated, you know, elevators, and I got the whole setup, I get hand-operated um dumb way it is, I get I get a lot of old, old stuff, you know.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that was important to me to get a really good base so that it was worth coming to, you know, and when we were smaller, it wasn't, in my opinion, it wouldn't be worth it.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like you wouldn't be having a podcast with me today if I didn't have much more to do, you know what I mean?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: So even though the money is even though the money's stretched out a little thinner because I have a bigger location, it overall it's been uh it's been a lot better to have it this way, I feel.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you feel like you have all the equipment you need, or are you still, you know, receiving donations from people around the country?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I get stuff every single week.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, I have a lady, um, Kaja uh Wilkinson, she works for Elevator World.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: She sent me last week, and I didn't even know because it's funny, I ordered a uh I ordered some uh like a calendar, which I knew was going to come in a round tube.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was here last, you know, two weekends ago, and I took the tube and I saw it at the front door, and I opened it up.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I put it over by my desk and I said, that's a tube for that for that thing I got on the wall.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then the phone, and I left it there.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I never even opened it.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: The following week I came in here and I saw the tube and I looked at it, I'm like, wow, that's an awful big tube for that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm looking at it again, I'm like, this is from Elevator World.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know whatever made anything from Elevator World.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a girl's name on it.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I opened the package up, and there were two paintings that were from, and she gave me the paperwork on it too.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's from uh William uh Sturgeon's home, and he's the founder of Elevator World.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And when he passed away in 2012, some of the some of the employees of Elevator World were allowed over his home and allowed to take, and they were given some of the pictures and some of the paintings.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a these are beautiful, beautiful uh canvas paintings of escalators.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I just open up the you know, open up the tube and I pull them out, and I'm like, wow, this is great.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just nice paintings, but the where they come from, you know what I mean?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: To have it from William Sturge's home.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I got we're gonna have them all framed up real nice, and I'll put them up the wall with the tag and saying where they come from.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And those things I think mean a lot to me too, because you can get a lot of equipment that can be you know the same type of stuff, but if it comes from a really neat place, like I have I have five or six Otis Flyball governors in here, but um a friend of ours that was working for Otis, he did the Mount Washington Hotel.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow, and they did the mod up there, and the Mount Washington Hotel is a beautiful, beautiful hotel.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they took the Otis Flyball Governor.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I want that, you gotta give me that thing.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, talking to the guy, you know, he's a big guy.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's seeing me, I'll give it to you.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I want that.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I just to say it came from Mount Washington, that's fantastic, you know.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So he you know, we get things from just from different places like that.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I get you know, elevator certificates from 1954 from the White House, you know.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, original original certificates from the White House and stuff like that.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's amazing.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, I sorry, I was just saying it's amazing to look at you know how you've seen in other words, as you look at at the equipment you have, you can see how the nation, the United States in particular, has has grown with with the elevator industry.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I say, you've seen from Mount Washington from from the the the you know Washington DC.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's uh really the nation that we know and the high rises have have kind of have grown with elevators or even or maybe elevators have allowed us to have some of the the buildings, the institutions, some of the things we have today that we probably wouldn't.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Without a doubt, the elevator, the elevator industry, people don't even realize that you know back in there in the industrial revolution, without the elevator industry, the the company wouldn't have grown like it the the world the the country wouldn't have grown like it had.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: The elevators actually brought all the material up into these buildings, you know, when they started getting three and four and five stories high, you know, they all started off as freight elevators.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: People don't realize that either.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the very early 1800s when they had all these steam powered, they used to call the steam-powered uh they would call them engines, they didn't call them machines back then.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: They literally took the the train engines off of uh the trains and turned them vertically and put a drum on instead of a wheel and spin it one way or the other, and you there you go.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're off to the races.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you're talking like a it's like a boiler, essentially, is what you got going on to to power it with.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly right.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a boiler with a steam-powered and a big flywheel, and it turned it just like a locomotive on a train, and it's spun, spun, you can spin it the other way, you can you know, back and forth and put a drum on it, and there you go.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: We also have in here, which um uh some things you'll never find anywhere else in the world is Larry Hart.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's an ex-veteran, he's an ex-uh IUC member.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: He lives out in the state of Oregon.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he is the guy's incredible, but he's made up a bunch of um uh elevator machines and um birdcage elevator.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, it's on route to me right now, is a uh you've probably seen it posted in LinkedIn, is the uh gearless machine.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did you see that?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see that yet.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe if you if you look at my you know my LinkedIn website there, you'll see that and uh I'll get better pictures of it because it's on route here now.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: But he's mailing me a Otis gearless machine that's this big, you know what I mean?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can hold in your hands, and it's precise, it's exactly spot on.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um he he made us a horizontal hydraulic, uh the the the the piston, the rope like three to one, the old style, real, real old style.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: He made one of those that I have here in the museum that runs, it actually operates.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't operate off of water.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's got it like hidden in with a little gear screw in there, just so when you ship it over the little shipper rope with a freight elevator, and you ship it over and the piston pushes the uh shivs out and the car travels up, you know, it travels up and hits a little ball stop and ships itself off, shovels back down, ships itself off, and shuts off.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: So he's made us up multiple things here at the museum, which are incredible.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's a just a really good craftsman, but those are just like the little models that he's made for us, you know, at the museum.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's great, that's great.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So as you as you look at the the future of what you've created, what do you what do you foresee for the for the museum going forward?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well I'm 62.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I retired in November of last year.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want to do is I want to try to run the museum and and uh but I have a I have a five-year lease here, and one le one year is gone.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have four more left.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: What I'd like to do is partner up with someone, you know, whether it's the international, whether it's uh, you know, Elevator World, whether it's Otis, and uh so that this thing goes on.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is this isn't this isn't, you know, this museum uh isn't about me.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's about you know our heritage and our history.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like, you know, uh I was I've just been fortunate enough to have a bunch of people that you know supported me, and then it just and then it just blew up.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: When we really started getting things in, I got stuff from all over the country.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have I have plaques in here from Norway, the people sent me from Norway.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: I have uh I have a really kind of weird thing.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have uh Martin Kane is a friend of mine, he works for Otis, he's in the UK, and uh he was actually one over and he worked on um uh the Queen's Castle.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he worked on, she has she has in her castle, she has a dollhouse.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: The dollhouse is about, I don't know, it's 10 feet tall, eight feet wide, it's like an eight foot square, and it comes up out of the ground, you know, it comes up out and the sides come down, and it has operating miniature cars and it has elevators in it.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he he the the whole the whole walls lift up in the air so you can see into the the into the dollhouse.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not a dollhouse for you know the average person.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is this was in her castle.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this was in the Queen's castle, and he re-wroped the uh he rewroped it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: He went there and you know had all the guards and everything walking around him and he re-wroped it and he gave me the cables from the from the dollhouse.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: So and he sent me stuff from over there.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I have stuff, uh some stuff from uh Hawaii, the the president of the IAC in Hawaii came out and visited us and he brought me tough.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so people uh I had a guy from uh Pennsylvania call me up and said, Steve, do you have any of the old um uh Horton uh oil cans?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I got some.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Well, I'm he goes, I'm retired, but I'm gonna go buy my building that I used to take care of and I'm gonna be up there and see you.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, all right.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: So sure enough, he he retired two years ago and he he came up and he went to one of the buildings in Pennsylvania and went up in the up in the room, up in the machine room, and there were a couple of old Harton cans, and he picked them up and he brought them to me and visited the museum, gave me the cans, and I threw them up on the shelf, and they're still full of oil.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I get I got stuff from, like I said, all over the country.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh Paul uh uh Paul Moore actually had uh uh he he um worked for Paint Elevator and he he worked there and he he had uh took the cranes uh when paint elevator went out of business in uh he worked there for 25 years when Paint Elevator went out of business in 1995.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: He took the big plaque off the crane, the big granny crane that used to run across the thing there for 100 years.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Paint Elevator is a great company.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: They did they made manufactured terrific elevators.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, they did most of the elevators all across all the football stadiums across the country.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he had all kinds of stuff and he did the same thing.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: He brought it home, he had his house for 20 years, didn't know what to do with it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Steve, you want some of the stuff?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Oh, I want all of it.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: He came down and uh Paul Lone, excuse me, Paul Lone, I get the name wrong.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Paul Lone's a just a really good guy.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: He brought he brought me hats and hard hats and you know, tons of stuff.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you know uh since the museums open up, I I have a collection of everybody's collection now.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So people that collect the things that you know said, Steve, can I bring it there?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, yeah.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I'm I need to keep the place going because I have a lot of people who are counting on me to keep this place up and going.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: I made friends with a guy in in Italy through LinkedIn.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's talking to me about I have a little I have a film projector here with film that shows elevator roping from the 1930s on how to rope an elevator.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I haven't watched it yet because I want to send the film out to somebody professionally to have it really so I don't burn a wreck the film.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but I post that online there because it's a J.A.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: uh roebling, and he's the gentleman who started and like in uh he he he didn't make the elevator cables but like in the eight eighteen hundreds or so like 18 uh 68, I think was when they first really came out with the the like a patent uh cables and stuff.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I posted online that it was 1930, and he he he he private messaged me, like you know, messaged me on the side and said, Steve, he goes, you know, I I know uh John A.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Roebeling and I did a lot of study on here with the cables and that I love what you're doing out there.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, but I think you get the dates wrong, and you know, and he goes, it wasn't you know it wasn't 1830.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I didn't write 1830, I wrote 1930.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Oh, oh yeah, you did.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was real nice about it.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: He he was thinking, I said, it's about the film and the the process.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: I go, it wasn't about Jay Robeling, it was about actually the projector and film stuff.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: But but I just like I said, I get I get friends all over the all over the world now that you know that you know that chirp in once in a while and send me stuff and talk about the museum.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: So they they love it.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good thing.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it sounds like you're you're building something amazing there that as you get you know people knowing about you, they want to they want to come visit, they want to send you money, they want to send you you know equipments or or memorials because there's there's a lot of people that have the that deep passion like you do for the industry that love it, want to see it live on.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're certainly do.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Patrick Carr actually gave me everything that he has, and he spent over a hundred thousand dollars buying things, you know.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have the original books from the oldest brothers that I know he paid a fortune for.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: He wouldn't even tell me what you bought it for, but from 1873.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, and it's a book that has every one of their orders, and it came from Yonkers, New York, and the brothers in there.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if you should see the all the inkwell writing in it, every page is an order.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you turn the page and you see this beautiful, you know, writings, you know, with inkwell, and they really it was uh it's it's an incredible book just to look at, you know, to know and then get the history that you know that came from this, you know.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we have things in here that just one of a kind offs that you know are very they're priceless.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the things are priceless, you know.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can there's only one in the world, and and we have it here.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: How so I a couple questions as we we're kind of getting toward the end of our time.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm you know, need to wrap up here in a minute, but I'm just curious, what do you what do you think it is that that makes people so passionate about the elevator industry?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Seems to just get in their blood.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I think this the simple reason that people people uh I love that saying that Westinghouse has over there taken for granted up through the years.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: People, you know, you you get the pictures behind you right there, the proof.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: You walk up, you you get into a box and up you get and you get off of it, and you get off of the box to the next floor.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't show you the hoist weight, it doesn't show you the machine room, it doesn't show you the top of the car, it doesn't show you the bottom of the car, it doesn't show you the limit switches, it doesn't show you all the electronics going on or the old mechanical stuff.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: So people have no clue when they get on that elevator what's in it.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think when people see the things that we have and we show them here, I brought a lot of the people that come to the museum here are all elevator people, a lot of them.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: But there are lots of people, just you know, people that want to hear the history.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a girl in here the other day with her husband, she loved it.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: She says, I don't know what you do, you know.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, I she goes, I'm glad you're here because you really tell a story to all of it and put it into you know into a story, and which I like to do, you know.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: I the same thing, the hero commerce guy said that too.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: That um I'd really like to to teach people about what's going on in it, you know what I mean?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I just think the people don't know enough about it when they hear and they see the stuff here, they're they're just fascinated.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it makes it makes you want to go on and on.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, Steve, I know your motto there at the museum is preserving our past and elevating our future.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me what you mean by that and what's the vision that you have for the work you're doing.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Matt, basically uh by preserving our past and elevating our future, what I what I meant by that was if we preserve the artifacts and the literature and the things we have of our past.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: That we can actually uh elevate our future by educating the guys that follow behind us.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: We preserved so many things over the years, and I feel like uh without without you know bringing it forward and showing the people that what was here and having to be able to physically touch and see the things that we had, they have no understand, no under idea really what these things were.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so much of these end up in the dumpsters over the years that you know we people throw away all this equipment because they're just too big to be used anywhere else.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I feel like we we need to we need to preserve some of these things for the future.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: So as far as uh elevating the future, what what do you see the kind of the uh the vision that you have for that?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I want to do is to make this uh museum last for a lot longer than I do.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my goal is to someday have it be taken over by a little bigger entity so that when I'm gone, this will still be here.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um we need to we need to preserve these things because there are no elevator museums out there.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: There is no one that's preserving any of these things.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when I do bring people in here and and show them, people love it.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: People get a total understanding of how important the elevator industry was to the America and to the rest of the world.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: And without it, you know, we really wouldn't have or be where we are today.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I realize that people that don't understand is just getting an elevator every day and your little box push the buttons, they they don't understand where how far we've come from the old flat belt pulleys and the water hydraulics to you know these high-speed, high-rise elevators that uh there's a lot lost in the in between.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think the only way we're gonna educate people is to save some of these things so the guys can down the road can see what we have.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I'm gonna do that because I have a collection of not just my father and Patrick Carr, but I have you know collections from all over the world now.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have collections from Ireland, uh from England, from Norway.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, these guys gave us this for a reason.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: They really want this to happen.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people, you know, even if they come into the museum and we give tours at the museum, uh, a lot of people leave here with a real understanding, you know, what they didn't have before, you know, a real education.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Even if they didn't even elevator guys come here.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've learned a lot over the years myself by being in the museum and people bringing me artifacts that I've never seen before and explaining to me how they worked and what their functions were and stuff and how they've changed over the years.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And these are things I bring to the table with people when they come here to see me, and it it works, it really helps.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I people leave here with a great understanding of it, and and I've and I love it because the people under know when they leave here that they get a little bit of education, sure, they know where the elevator you know industry came from and how important it is.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I'm a little biased because I spent my whole life doing this, but you know, it's one of the greatest trades in the world, and uh I've always felt that way.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and we're gonna we're gonna make this happen and preserve for for others to see someday.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh one other question.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed in a lot of your material that you have, uh, your dog shows up.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if he's there, do you want to introduce him to us?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: I certainly joke.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Boom, come here.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: Come here and say hi.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is my dog, Boomer.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: Boom, come here.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: Beautiful dog.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right here.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Come here.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: He's hard to get hit.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: Boom.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is my guy right here.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Looks like a wonderful companion.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably he's great.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Elevators too, right?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's he's a guy.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's uh he's my mascot at the museum.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he comes in when people come in here, they love him.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: They always get the pictures taken beside him, and uh, you know, he's he's my buddy.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's been here with me every day when we opened up and been here for me for years.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: So awesome.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: He's the mascot of the museum.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, Steve, thank you so much for for being with me today and wish you the best as you continue to build the museum.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much, Matt.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate your support.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: You bet.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the All Red Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can check us out online at elevatorcareers.net.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe, and until next time, stay safe.