Ever hear of elevator shaft apartment conversions in New York City?

July 15, 2009 12:45 PM

Ever hear of elevator shaft apartment conversions in New York City?

When I lived in Manhattan in the late 90's, I rented the the little apartment on top of this building. The broker explained that this was a unique, but not entirely uncommon residential unit on top of a non-residential zoned building because during WW2 all buildings in New York that were lower than four stories and had elevators had to surrender the steel from the elevator and its mechanisms to the army. So the apartment I lived in was apparently an elevator's pulley/engine room pre-WW2, and I bought the explanation because it only had one window (which the broker explained was used as vent when the elevator was operational), and I really needed a place to live.

Now that I'm older and wiser and Google-powered, I thought these apartments would make for an interesting FPP on the blue, but all my searching has yielded bupkis. I really can't find any information that reinforces or disproves what the broker told me. Any ideas?

posted by analogue to Home & Garden (13 answers total)

all buildings in New York that were lower than four stories and had elevators

This alone has me wondering. Buildings of this height in NYC rarely have elevators in my experience.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 12:59 PM on July 15, 2009

Buildings of this height in NYC rarely have elevators in my experience.
Industrial-zoned buildings of 1+ storey frequently have freight elevators, at least. That said, I have never heard of this practice, in 24 years of living in NY. It seems incredibly sketchy, and also makes me incredibly happy.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 1:07 PM on July 15, 2009

So your question has made me curious, and I've run a few searches myself on Google's news archives and the NYT archives. This is the closest I've come up with:

NYT: TOMBS CELL BARS GO ON SCRAP PILE; City Lists 49 Old Buildings That May Be Wrecked for Metal Vital to War
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:08 PM on July 15, 2009

Chesty: Good point. The OP did say that his apartment was "on top of a non-residential zoned building." If Google is displaying things properly, then clearly the God's Love We Deliver building was not an apartment building. It could be that disused industrial buildings were cannibalized for their steel (as suggested by that NYT article), rather than there being an actual directive to rip out elevators from working buildings.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:13 PM on July 15, 2009

This alone has me wondering. Buildings of this height in NYC rarely have elevators in my experience.

Right, because in WW2 they ripped them all out for the scrap metal?
posted by @troy at 1:17 PM on July 15, 2009

Response by poster: Chesty: Yes, judging by the size of my apartment, it must have been a freight elevator because the apartment was 500-600 square feet and most passenger elevators back then would have much smaller shafts (as I've discovered in my search).

Conrad: You're likely on the right track. Let me know if you discover anything else!
posted by analogue at 1:23 PM on July 15, 2009

Generally speaking: Four stories and under would usually be a hydraulic elevator, which would have the machine room at the lowest landing. There wouldn't be penthouse equipment. It's possible your building had a traction elevator and the machine room was somehow converted to an apartment, but I'm not sure that those circumstances would be widely found. I would try looking for it as "machine room", I did a quick Google using that and didn't see anything but I didn't go too deep.

I'm not sure I buy that all that elevator equipment had to be surrendered, but I'll ask my colleagues if they know of it. I'll ask your specific question as well.

Maybe expand the FPP into different, odd NYC apartment arrangements? You could probably work your old apartment into that, maybe with photos?
posted by KAS at 1:27 PM on July 15, 2009

Response by poster: KAS: Well, the reason I bought the story about the elevator equipment needing to be surrendered at the time was because I was moving to Manhattan from Long Island, and I remembered all the old timers would talk about the Long Island trolleys and how some of the unused rails were claimed by the army because of the need for steel during the world war.
posted by analogue at 1:39 PM on July 15, 2009

Sorry, I didn't phrase that very well. I wouldn't be shocked if it were true, and I pretty much accepted it until I started really thinking about it in the framework of the question, and then I thought wait a minute, not so sure about it. It definitely could be so for that building, maybe all of them. Plus I know that I'm approaching that too much from today's perspective.
posted by KAS at 2:18 PM on July 15, 2009

Best answer: One problem with that story is that the building in question appears to have been built in 1952. Your apartment is referred to as a "garret" in the linked story.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/10/realestate/postings-18000-square-feet-avenue-americas-springstreet-god-s-love-we-deliver.html
posted by davey_darling at 2:37 PM on July 15, 2009

I have lived in NYC for 43 years, and my family's in residential real estate and are generally weird-apartment-conversion obsessed, and one of my best friends is a local commercial/residential real estate magnate, and I've never heard of this. On the other hand, my best friend has lived on the same block as the GLWD building for 42 years and neither of us knew there was an apartment up there either.
posted by nicwolff at 2:43 PM on July 15, 2009

Right, because in WW2 they ripped them all out for the scrap metal?

No, because I was thinking of residential buildings, which at that height are almost always notorious NYC "walk-ups," and very clearly possess nothing like an elevator shaft.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 4:01 PM on July 15, 2009

Response by poster: Davey: I'm marking your answer as "best" because it utterly invalidates the tale told by the broker. I was living in a garret. That's the long and short it. What's funny is that I would have rented it out anyway out of need without the elaborate story. Thanks to everyone. I knew the hive mind would solve this puzzle!
posted by analogue at 4:21 PM on July 15, 2009