For those who enjoy their ride with a shudder, a lurch and a familiar smile, there is still yet time to savor the old-fashioned pleasure of some of the city’s last human-operated elevators.
The Fine Arts Building elevators on South Michigan — three of them — are being sacrificed in the name of efficiency and cost-saving. And they were expected to be replaced by mid-2025.
Blame (or thank) unspecified construction delays, a spokeswoman for the building told the Chicago Sun-Times.
So if you’re paying a visit to the building for, say, a voice lesson or to have the strings replaced on your violin, you’ll still be able to ride one of the manually operated Otis elevators through the end of 2026.
The Fine Arts Building first opened in 1898 and was built to display and repair Studebaker carriages and wagons. New York had the very first Otis passenger elevator in 1857, powered by steam engine.
“We have been holding on to them as long as humanly possible and the time has finally come. Truly, it’s harder to get the parts and it’s far more expensive to maintain,” Jacob Harvey, managing artistic director, said back in the summer of 2023, when plans were announced to replace the human-operated cars.