Rising to the occasion

Century Building’s old elevators run a well-worn path

By Janine Anderson

Wodke stands inside the elevator he operates at the Century Building in Milwaukee. Photos by Janine Anderson

James Wodke wears a brace on his left hand.

It’s the hand that grasps the elevator doors and gates to yank them open and slam them shut. It’s the hand he’s used for nearly 16 years operating the old 1920s-era elevators in the Century Building on Wells Street in Milwaukee.

He doesn’t know exactly what the problem is with his hand, but he knows what caused it.

“It’s either carpal tunnel or tendinitis,” he said. “It’s from opening these doors all these years.”

Wodke’s pain is a remnant of a lost era. Today, everyone is an elevator operator. But in 1925, when Otis Elevator Co. premiered its electric elevator, it took a professional with a trained eye and strong wrists to make the machine run.

There were no floor buttons to push and no sensors to keep the doors from closing. Instead, two rows of lit numbers let the operator know which floor had people waiting and which direction they wanted to go.

The operator pushed the outside door closed, set the metal gate into place and turned the crank to get the elevator to the floor to get passengers.

The original controller for a 1920s-era Otis elevator sits at the Century Building in Milwaukee.

Three of those elevators were installed in the Century Building when it was built in 1925, and they’ve been in continuous operation since. They’re relics of a time when an elevator was more than just an easy way to get from one floor to another; it connected tenants and provided full-time employment.

Wodke can attest to that. For tenants and regular visitors, he no longer needs to ask where they’re headed; he just knows and starts the elevator in motion.

Floor to floor he goes, pull the gate, pull the door, let the people on. Push the door, push the gate, turn the crank. Watch the floor and try to stop so the elevator lines up just right with the landing. If he’s off by a little, Wodke warns his passengers to watch their step.

A few times, with a full load of people, Wodke’s been too slow with the crank and hit the safety stop below the elevator, bringing the car to a halt several feet below the first-floor landing. Then, Otis has to come out to reset the system, Wodke said, and he moves into the back-up passenger elevator.

An elevator indicator light shines on the first floor of the Century Building in Milwaukee. The 1920s-era Otis elevators are original to the building and are still manned by an operator.

When he took the job so long ago, Wodke said, he figured he’d work there for a little while and then end up driving a truck somewhere. But for the past 10 years, this has been his full-time gig.

These elevators aren’t silent. There’s none of the magic feeling people get from some modern elevators, where it’s nearly impossible to tell that they are moving. In these elevators, there’s a breeze coming through the open grillwork, and the floors move past inches outside the gate.

But the real noise is still hidden. Above the eighth floor resides the machinery that hoists the elevators.

Up there, metal clanks and sparks fly as connection after connection is made.

Every time Wodke hits the switch, the contacts close, emitting a flash of blue light.

“These are the original motors, contactors and everything,” said Joe Sowatzke, director of maintenance for the Century Building. “The only real upgrade since they were new was the indicator lights.”

Each elevator has 230 volts of direct current running to it and a 200-amp fuse.

In the basement, a rectifier changes the alternating current entering the building into the direct current necessary to run the elevators.

In the 1920s, when the elevators were installed, nearly everything ran off direct current.

“Everything was DC, especially motors and motor controls, because they couldn’t control the frequency of AC power,” Sowatzke said. “If you started it up on AC instead of a (gradual ascent), it would have shot up. Especially through solid-state controls, they learned to control the current better and everything changed to AC.”

We Energies owns the rectifier, Sowatzke said, and Otis still maintains the elevators.

“They’ve been under maintenance contract with Otis,” he said, “since they were installed.”

So far, Otis has always been able to fix the elevators when something goes wrong. But it can take weeks to get a replacement part.

“Mainly, what Otis does is when they tear them out all over the country, they stockpile the old parts,” Sowatzke said. “Some have to be custom-made in order to work.”

Kim Killips, operations manager for the building, said owner Ron Sanfilipo is committed to the building’s history.

“It’s important for him to maintain the historic integrity,” Killips said.

In the Century Building, that means keeping the elevators. But there’s another reason to keep things the way they are.

“For us, the kind of reason we haven’t done it, in this building the first and second floors are almost all retail,” Sowatzke said. “Everything from three to eight is offices. In a building like this, if we didn’t have an elevator operator, we’d have him or somebody like him to sit in the lobby.

“It’s not costing us any more in labor to keep them here.”

Wodke said he’d rather have his current job than getting stuck working security in the building.

“I’ve been a security guard,” he said. “It’s slow. Some people come in and tell me this has to be a boring job.

“I say no. Parking attendant, that’s got to be a boring job.”