The Historic Vintage Wooden Otis L-type Escalators at Macy’s Herald Square in NYC! It’s been 4 years and over 1 million views since my last video, so I decided to make a new improved version!! Enjoy!
That’s really cool! There’s an old macys near where I live in Pasadena CA with really really awesome mid century furniture pieces, art, and chandeliers.
Wooden escalators are hard to find these days because of the King’s Cross Fire. King’s Cross is a tube station in London and a fire started under one of the escalators. When a train pulled in, that little flame became an inferno. Ever since, train stations have been required to have metal escalators
Let’s hope that this iconic department store-and it’s Equally iconic escalators-survive the retail apocalypse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic! These wooden Otises-some dating back to when Macy’s Herald Square first opened(in 1902!)-are,like the beautiful building that houses them and the legendary store itself-are IRREPLACABLE New York City landmarks! Let’s hope 4 the BEST here!!!
G M I 2nd that G M! Macy’s Herald Square-along with the flagship NYC stores of Bloomingdale’s ,Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman-are among the last surviving vestages of The Golden Age of Retail-when NYC had MANY great full-city block department stores and big cities across the 🇺🇸 USA ALL had their own big stores-including my lifelong hometown-STL MO-which had THREE big Downtown stores thru the 1960’s and crossstate rival Kansas City had FOUR-including its own Macy’s!!!
It was because of a phenomenon known as the trench effect when the heat gets channeled upward and then the wooden steps above reach combustion temp all at the same time. it's like an explosin
Thanks, I recall in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950s, when I was growing up, our downtown department stores had the wooden ones. They kept them around through the 1970s,...a few floors, were still serviced by them, until the early 2000s.
...Back when "Going to Macy's" actually MEANT something! Oh, how I used to always beg my parents to ride up and down the wooden escalators @ Macy's when I was a kid...However, because we often had my younger brother and sister along in their respective strollers, it was usually the elevator we'd take! Occasionally, my father and I would break off just so I could ride on the old woodies, though... You always knew when you were close to where the Macy's escalators were with their characteristic _"wood into wood rumble"_ ...
BTW! Not a fire risk. No smoking allowed. The wood is a facade. There's metal underneath. See below; The world's largest department store installed its oak and ash wood escalators between 1920 and 1930. Over the years, they've been renovated for safety standards and mechanical updates. But while some have been fully modernized, the treads on most remain wooden.
Love riding these in the New York store. But I think the most used ones going up and down between the 1st and 3rd floors have been replaced by metal if I remember correctly.
That's true. Up until 1987, many of the Underground stations had wooden escalators. In 1987 however, in the King's Cross St Pancreas Underground station, someone dropped a cigarette bud on one of the escalator steps. It set fire to the escalator due to being wooden and the whole station was gutted, killing 31 people and injuring 100. This signalled the demise of wooden escalators on the Underground. A ban on smoking in the Underground stations and on the trains was put in place. All the wooden escalators that were around eventually got replaced by the conventional steel escalators. The last station to replace their wooden escalators was Greenford station in 2013. That was the end of wooden escalators on the Underground.
It seems just the finishing of the escalator used wood. I thought it is completely or at least most of the parts are by wood like the “wooden roller coaster”. Anyway still a good thing to know.
I imagine they just kept the wooden facade for historical sake. They'd have to update the escalators to be brought up to safety code. Seems these are a hybrid of old and new technology working. Notice the emergency shut off buttons, and I imagine they originally didn't have the conveyor belt arm railing ether.
Hard to believe this is a high end department store with rickety old scratched up wooden escalators and broken tiles. Someone on TripAdvisor said the same; that the escalators were dusty and dirty like a Subway station. Lol! 😆
Вот многие говорят, что самые первые эскалаторы появились в Московском метрополитене, а вот и не правда! Вот самый первый в мире эскалатор, в Нью-Йорке находится.
@@RaymondHng I see. Now probably this escalator has already been replaced. I myself live in Moscow and filmed various escalators of the Moscow metro the oldest wooden escalators in the Moscow metro were at the Baumanskaya metro station (Line 3) these escalators worked from 1944-2015 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DxWeLDxRnEs.html
The King's Cross fire was a 1987 fire in a London Underground station with 31 fatalities, after a fire under a wooden escalator suddenly spread into the underground ticket hall in a flashover. The fire had been started by a lit match being dropped onto the escalator. There were 31 fatalities.
@@rock-afire-fan cuz they cost more to maintain than the ones they put in. So they got rid of the fancy wood for stand glass. It pisses me off cuz they are a Casino and trying to be fancy
@@rock-afire-fan I haven't seen many wood ones but they are normally fancier that what we have if they had perks like making people exercise if they are that big it's not a bad thing.
HELLO from the future! I have some solid tips for you! Stock up on toilet paper, paper towels, LOTS of hand sanitizer and food supplies. Fill up that freezer and get some pasta, rice etc. You won't want to be in the market for a long time! You will need some N-95 masks and all forms of Lysol virucidals (spray, wipes, etc) If you have a few extra bucks, get as many Nintendo switch game consoles. You can sell them for a huge profit later on. this can help pay your bills when your job shuts down for a year or so. Good luck and be well! 2021. (what else did I miss?)
