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A Museum Case Study 

The Acquisition of a Small 

Residential Hydraulic Elevator 

ROBERT M. VOGEL 

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PRESS 
SERIES PUBLICATIONS OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 

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Secretary of the Smithsonian. In his formal plan for the institution, Joseph Henry outlined a 

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in all branches of knowledge." This theme of basic research has been adhered to through the 

years by thousands of titles issued in series publications under the Smithsonian impnnt, 

commencing with Smittisonian Contributions to Know/ledge in 1848 and continuing with the 

following active series: 

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Smittisonian Contributions to tlie Earth Sciences 

Smithsonian Contributions to the l^arine Sciences 

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Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 

Smithsonian Folklife Studies 

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In these series, the Institution publishes small papers and full-scale monographs that report 

the research and collections of its various museums and bureaux or of professional colleagues 

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Papers or monographs submitted for series publication are received by the Smithsonian 

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Robert McC. Adams 

Secretary 

Smithsonian Institution 
SMITHSONIA N STUDIE S I N HISTOR Y AND TECHNOLOG Y • NUMBE R 50 

Vertical Transportation in Old Back Bay, 

a Museum Case Study: 

The Acquisition of a Small Residential 

Hydraulic Elevator 

Robert M. Vogel 

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PRESS 

Washington, D.C. 

1988 
ABSTRAC T 

Vogel, Robert M. Vertical Transportation in Old Back Bay, a Museum Case Study: The 

Acquisition of a Small Residential Hydraulic Elevator. Smithsonian Studies in History and 

Technology, number 50, 41 pages, 28 figures, 1 table, 1988.—The National Museum of 

American History recently acquired a small elevator from a 19th century residence in Boston's 

Back Bay. The acquisition was one of unusual historical significance, for the elevator's means 

of propulsion—^by hydraulic pressure derived from the city water mains—was that employed 

in the first elevator systems technically capable of the long runs and high speeds required in 

the service of tall buildings. The Boston elevator, complete and original in all details, thus was 

a perfect example of one of the two technologies (the other, the skeleton iron/steel structural 

frame) that had made the skyscraper possible, at a scale that a museum could accommodate. 

The mechanical basis of these hydraulic elevators evolved from a sequence of developments 

in vertical transportation that stretched from the first powered passenger elevators—in English 

textile mills, ca. 1830, to the final development of the electric traction elevator, ca. 1905. 

The removal of the elevator was itself an undertaking of some interest, preceded by the 

complete documentation of the system in place. During the course of disassembly, it was 

discovered that the original installation (which was made some 35 years after the house was 

built), while for the most part an artful one, incorporated several mildly serious structural gaffes. 

A final aspect of the removal process was the attempt to discover just when the elevator had 

been installed, and by whom. That ultimately was revealed not by physcial evidence but through 

water department records. 

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION DATE is handstamped in a limited number of initial copies and is 

recorded in the Institution's annual report, Smithsonian Year. COVER: "Teagle" elevator in 

English cotton mill, ca. 1830 (see Figure 1). 

Library of Cwigress Cataloging in Publication Data 

Vogel, Robert M. 

Vertical transportation in Old Back Bay, a museum case study. 

(Smithsonian studies in history and technology ; no. 50) 

Bibliography: p. 

1. Elevators—Massachusetts—Back Bay (Boston)—History. 2. Elevators, Private residence—^History. 

I. Tide. II. Series. 

TJ1375.V64 1988 621.8'676 88-600251 
Contents 

Page 

Introduction 1 

The Origins of the Hydraulic Elevator 1 

The Elevator in 19th Century Boston 6 

The Back Bay 8 

The Offer; The Inspection; The Decision 9 

Post-Removal Investigation 22 

Elevators in Back Bay 23 

The Wheeler-Brewer Decision: Hydraulic or Electric? 27 

Elias Brewer, Elevator Builder 30 

Appendix: A Chronology of Elias Brewer 37 

Notes 38 

References 41 

m 

Vertical Transportation in Old Back Bay, 

a Museum Case Study: 

The Acquisition of a Small Residential 

Hydraulic Elevator 

Robert M, Vogel 

Introduction 

Late in 1984 the National Museum of American History 

(NMAH) was offered a small hydraulic elevator by the new 

owner of a row house in Boston's celebrated Back Bay. The 

elevator, installed well after the house's completion in 1866, 

had not operated since the years of World War II, was not 

needed, and stood in the way of plans for major rehabilitation 

of the building. When a museum accepts an elevator it is quite 

unlike the acquisition of a tea cup, even if the saucer is 

included, for an elevator is, after all, less a conventional 

"object" than a "system." There is a more-or-less mobile car, 

relatively independent and simple to remove, but in addition 

are all the other of the system's elements that power the car 

and control its movements—every one of them firmly built-in 

but equally essential to the historical and technological story 

that the elevator is to tell.^ 

Consequently, a museum does not undertake acquisition of 

an elevator, even a small one, lightly. This particular one was 

accepted on the strength of its representing the type that had 

been the first to be built on a large-scale commercial basis, the 

type that, probably unwittingly in most instances, has been so 

widely cited by historians of architecture and urban design as 

"the elevator" that "made possible the tall building." Clearly 

the preservation of one of these historically crucial elevator 

systems from an actual tall building of the 1880s, either in 

situ on or in a museum setting, would be impossible for a dozen 

reasons, not the least being that none are known to exist.^ 

The following account describes the recording of the Boston 

elevator before its extraction from the house, the removal itself, 

and the documentation of the elevator and its builder based 

Robert M. Vogel, Curator of Heavy Machinery and Civil Engineering. 

National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Institution, 

Washington. D.C. 20560. 

on the physical evidence and the verbal record. 

It is hoped that in due time there will be a sequel describing 

the installation of the elevator in the National Museum of 

American History, restored to full operation. 

The Origins of the Hydraulic Elevator 

Smooth running and noiseless, starting and stopping easy 

and graceful; capable of running fast or slow, at the will of the 

operator, without any of the noise or annoyance of the steam 

machine, has given the Hydraulic Passenger Elevator the 

monopoly of popular favor. From a catalog ofLS. Graves &. 

Son, Manufacturers of Passenger and Freight Elevators. 

Rochester. New York, ca. 1890. 

The elevator is an ancient device for the raising of both 

goods and people. Its roots are intertwined with those of cranes 

and hoists used in the construction of buildings and the routine 

hoisting of materials and products in mills, factories, and 

warehouses. The true elevator—having a car (or platform) 

designed for the accommodation of passengers (or freight), 

operating among the floors of a multi-story building, guided 

by a system of vertical rails, raised by a dedicated, 

mechanically powered machine under the full control of an 

operator on the car—seems to have emerged by the early 

1830s, in the cotton-spinning mills of Lancashire. These 

buildings, large for the time, by then had reached up to six 

stories, and handled cotton and yarn in such volume that it 

became impractical to hoist the bales and various goods to the 

upper floors by the traditional manual rope tackle outside a 

series of vertically ranged loading doors. It was a logical matter 

to devote a shaftway, within the building itself, to hoisting and 

to increase the efficiency of the process by powering it through 

belting from the mill's line shafting. Control was obtained by 
SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE l.—"Teagle" elevator in an English cotton mill, ca. 1830. The system was 

powered by the mill's line shafting. Control was by a stationary endless rope passing 

through the car and connected to the hoisting machinery, a scheme widely used for 

low-speed elevators—including the Boston elevator—until well into the 20th 

century. (From The Penny Magazine [London], 25 July 1835:284.) 

a stationary endless hand rope running the height of the shaft, 

which could be moved up or down by a man on the car to raise, 

lower, or stop. This basic arrangement of elements, then called 

the "teagle" (a variant of "tackle"), survived as a manufactured 

product until at least the 1920s in the United States, and in use 

until the present (Figure 1). As experiments had shown that a 

considerable amount of energy was expended by the hands in 

climbing the stairs of these mills—energy that could better be 

spent on productive tasks—^the teagles were used for passengers as well. 

The early development of an elevator expressly for 

passengers was based on a close interrelationship among 

several issues: the urging of property owners and architects for 

taller buildings; the need for absolute safety of the passengers— 

especially in the event of hoisting-rope failure; and the 

evolution of efficient, safe, and easily controllable hoisting 

machinery. It was the solution of the second of these factors 

that at a stroke permitted the elevator to evolve into a fully 

practical, commercial technology, and which has come to be 

indelibly set in the general lore of architectural and engineering 

history as "the invention of the elevator." This was the 

development by Elisha Graves Otis of a simple and nearly 

foolproof device to hold the car firmly in place should the 

hoisting rope(s) part. Otis demonstrated this at the New York 

Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1854, in effect opening the door 

to the development of all subsequent elevator technology. 

Second in importance only to the introduction of a practical 

and dependable car safety in the history of the elevator was 

that of an independent hoisting machine. The teagle and its 

direct successors were perfectly adequate for use in factories 

and mills where a source of central mechanical power already 

was present, but they failed in the non-industrial, unpowered 

setting of the hotel, commercial structure, or residential 

building when increasing building height pressed for a means 

of mechanical ascension for the inmates. In the middle of the 

19th century, in the middle of the large city, this could be 

accomplished by one means only: steam. The steam elevator 

machine by 1865 had evolved into a fully practical affair at the 

hands of several builders and was widely installed in buildings 

of all types. 

It had, however, two serious limitations. The first was its 

capability of hoisting solely by means of a winding drum 

(turned by the steam engine), upon which the hoisting rope(s) 

was wound during ascent. There was a practical limit to the 
NUMBER 50 

size of the drum, which acted as a collateral limit to the rise 

of the elevator and thus, effectively, the height of the building. 

The other problem was the inherent complication of a steam 

plant: boiler; chimney; fuel and ash storage and handling; and 

water supply. Further drawbacks were the expenditure of 

energy even when the system was not at work and the need for 

a nearly full-time attendant, usually licensed; not to mention 

the very real psychological disadvantage of having a potentially explosive boiler on the premises. This might do in a large 

commercial building with a steam plant for heating akeady 

necessarily in place; in a small building it would not, 

eliminating any possibility of an elevator. 

The eventual solution was a third major class of elevator, 

the hydraulic, in which the rotary motion and winding drum 

of earlier hoisting systems were replaced by the linear motion 

of a hydraulic piston, indirectly translated to the linear motion 

of the elevator car. The concept initially was applied not to lifts 

but to cranes, appropriately enough by Joseph Bramah 

(1740-1814), the prolific English inventor of, among other 

things, the hydraulic press (1795) and thus the entire 

descendant family of hydrostatic machinery. It would have 

been a simple leap of imagination for as active a mind as 

Bramah's to consider applying the powerful forces available 

in his hydraulic press to the lifting of great weights. The 

principal problem was provision of some sort of multiplying 

mechanism to adapt the relatively short stroke of the press to 

the longer lift of a crane. From 1802 Bramah built several 

hydraulic factory and dock cranes, but rather than providing 

the multiplication with a purely linear mechanism—as in 

hindsight seems so obvious a solution—he employed what 

then must have appeared the logical element of any mechanical 

hoist a winding drum. The drum was revolved by a pinion 

gear, turned by a rack that was an extension of the press piston 

rod (Figure 2). The relative diameters of pinion and drum 

provided the factor of needed linear multiplication. If die drum 

were twice the diameter of the pinion, for example, the crane 

hook would travel twice the distance of the piston (which 

conversely would have to exert twice the force represented by 

the load on the hook). 

Although Bramah did apply a steam pumping engine to one 

of these cranes in his own works, the general idea, while 

practical, found only limited use, for in most instances the press 

water was furnished by hand pump, leaving the crane a 

hand-powered and thus slow, as well as clumsy, machine, not 

to say far more complex and expensive than an equivalent 

hand-operated crane of conventional form. 

The hydraulic crane was moved a major step toward 

commercial praticality in 1846 with the invention by William 

Armstrong (later of ordnance fame) of a crane for his works 

at Newcastle upon Tyne, powered by water pressure derived 

from a reservoir on a hill 200 feet above. The principle was 

simple and far better adapted to the long linear motions of 

hoisting machinery than Bramah's awkward rack, pinion, and 

drum. 

The pressurized water forced a piston into a cylinder (Figure 

3). But now to the end of the piston rod was attached a sheave 

around which passed a chain. One end of the chain was fixed; 

the other passed over a multiplying sheave directly to a hoisting 

hook. As the piston moved into the cylinder the free end of the 

chain drew up the hook, raising the load (at three times the 

piston's speed and run). For lowering, a waste valve was 

opened, allowing the water to run from the cylinder, letting 

load and hook descend by gravity. The system was simple, 

effective, and ideally translatable to the raising of an elevator 

car. 

In fact, Armstrong himself appears to have been the 

translator. Just contemporaneously with his crane, Jesse 

Hartley, the multitalented architect-engineer of most of 

Liverpool's extensive 19th century dock system, was designing 

the huge Albert Dock. Hearing of Armstrong's innovation. 

Hartley initially dismissed the notion of a "water crane," but 

nevertheless visited Newcastle to see for himself whether it 

held any promise at all for handling freight at the new dock. 

The device far surpassed any expectations he might have had 

and in 1848 he ordered from Armstrong two hydrauhc cranes 

and two hydraulic hoists or lifts for the dock warehouses.^ 

From a surviving drawing it is seen that the lifts—of five-ton 

capacity—were the direct precursors of the hydraulic elevator 

as it came to be developed, in all essential details."* 

Although this application of the principle to elevators at 

Albert Dock by Armstrong and Hartley seems to have been a 

(presumably) successful fluke not widely copied, it did become 

the nearly universal method of operating cranes and other 

materials-handling equipment in the British Isles. But while 

the Armstrong crane itself never became widely popular in the 

United States, its influence on American elevator technology 

was profound. 

Of itself it would have been useless for operating elevators 

in the absence of the necessary supply of water under 

pressure—the real source of energy. That appeared in the 

post-Civil War period in the form of the effective public 

water-supply systems possessed by most American cities. 

There, represented by the pressurized water in the mains, was 

a readily available, fairly cheap, clean, safe, and quite 

dependable source of energy, right at the doorstep of any 

building on the distribution network. It was an external power 

supply ideally matched to the Armstrong system of hfting. 

By the early 1870s several builders had adopted and adapted 

the technology, resulting in an elevator diat was compact, 

depended for its motive power only on a water main, was free 

of the problems of a steam plant, and could easily be controlled 

from the car by a hand rope running to a simple valve that 

controlled the passage of water to and from the power cylinder. 

It was, in basic terms, like a rope tackle in reverse: as the two 

pulley blocks were drawn apart (one fixed, the other hauled 

by the hydraulic piston) the free end of the rope raised the car. 

The height of the rise could be increased nearly without limit, 

yet keeping the cylinder of reasonable length, by increasing the 
SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 2.—Bramah's adaptaticm of his basic hydraulic press to the powering of the dock or warehouse crane 

by introducing a winding drum tumed by a rack and pinion. The hydraulic pressure was fumished by a hand 

pump in most of the few installations mounted by Bramah, the net result being a clumsy and unduly complicated 

hand crane. (From David Brewster [compiler]. The American Edition of the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia 

[Philadelphia, 1823], plate 215.) 

number of fixed and moveable sheaves and thus the 

"multiplication" or the "gear" of the tackle. This, of course, 

meant that the piston was called on to exert proportionally 

greater force, but that was dealt with simply by increasing its 

cross-sectional area, in relationship to the available water 

pressure (Figure 4). 

The system, which came to be known generically as the 

"rope-geared hydraulic" (Figure 5), was introduced to the 

United States in the early 1870s, improved principally by 

Charles Whittier and Cyrus Baldwin of Boston. On the basis 

of its elegant simplicity and effectiveness, within a short time 

it became literally the standard of the industry. It had achieved 

fully matured form by the mid-1870s and was being 

manufactured by numerous firms around the country. Because 

of its inherent capability of great rise and speed, and 

smoothness of operation as well, by that time there were 

installations in New York of up to 20 stories and, as has so 

often been related, the age of the skyscraper was upon us. 

The basic rope-geared hydraulic was refined and improved 

during the remainder of the century. Rises and speeds were 

increased and control systems became increasingly responsive 

and complex (Figure 6). It followed naturally that power 
fTW^^^^ 

'v/\^:./(. '^,y:^y^yy'/'yXv'.^.^.'. 

FIGURE 3.—^The hydraulic crane was rationalized in 1846 by WiUiam 

Armstrong, who eliminated the winding drum and used the hydraulic piston 

to draw apart the two elements of an inverse rope tackle. As the sheaves were 

separated, the tackle's free end was drawn in raising the hook and its load, in 

the machine shown at three times the piston's travel and speed. The smaller 

hydraulic cylinder above drove a rack to slew (rotate) the crane. The main 

cylinder was slightly inclined, p>ermitting gravity to assist in overhauling the 

hook. The ratio of multiplication could be varied, and the pressurized water 

supply could be provided by gravity from an elevated reservoir or by pumps. 

This "rope-gearing" principle was the basis of the first practical hydraulic 

elevator, as developed in the United States. (From John H. Jallings, Elevators 

[Chicago, 1916].) 

WATER UNDER MAINS 

PRESSURE ( = 50 PSI) 

FIGURE 4.—The basic elements of the "pushing-type" rope-geared hydraulic 

elevator. The gear or ratio shown is 2:1—the car traveling two feet to the 

piston's one, and at double the pistwi's speed. The piston, corresp<Midingly, 

must exert twice the force on the traveling sheave as that imposed by the 

weight of the car and its load. The gear could be made as high as 20:1 for very 

tall buildings by increasing the number of fixed and traveling sheave pairs, and 

the equivalent number of rope wraps around them, as a means of keeping the 

cylinder to a reasonable length. 
SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 5.—The vertical-cylinder, pulling-type rope-geared hydraulic elevator 

in its initial mature commercial form, ca. 1875-1880. As in the teagle, control 

is by endless hand rope, here working the operating or control valve (at the 

base of the cylinder). For higher rises and speeds the rope was replaced by a 

lever or crank wheel. Although the basic arrangement was essentially the same 

for vertical- and horizontal-cylinder machines, with the vertical the dead load 

of the car was largely counterbalanced by the piston-and-traveling-sheave 

assembly with only a small amount of additional weight generally being 

needed. (From The Builder & Wood-Worker [New York], June 1880:iv.) 

requirements eventually outstripped the energy available from 

the city mains with the consequence that dedicated steam 

pumping plants became an integral part of the elvator system 

of larger buildings, somewhat diminishing the advantage of the 

type. At just about the time diat the rope-geared hydraulic had 

reached the limits of its capability, almost overnight it was 

superseded by a second generation of the electric elevator in 

the very form that we know it today: the traction type. This, 

like the rope-geared hydraulic and unlike the first generation 

forms of the electric in which a motor merely was substituted 

for the steam engine, was not based on a winding drum. The 

rise was therefore unlimited, permitting vertical transportation 

in the tallest structures that could—and can—be erected.^ 

The Elevator in 19th Century Boston 

There were many justifications for Boston's reference to its 

19th century self as "The Hub of the Universe" for in an 

astonishing number of fields of human accomplishment the 

city can fairly be said to have been preeminent. Quite apart 

from musical, educational, ecclesiastical, medical, and legal 

attainment, in and around the "Athens of America" there was 

a considerable ferment in most of the fields of technology: 

instrument making; railway, civil, and mechanical engineering; 

hydraulic theory and practice; electrical theory and practice; 

and the engineering of public works, among others. 

Many of the innovators in these areas were of the immediate 

region, and what with the notably robust Boston Society of 

Engineers (of all stripes) and the several other formal and 

informal means of intercommunication among the theoreticians 

and practical men there must have been a strongly synergistic 

atmosphere within which ideas were readily exchanged and the 

work of others was as readily observed. 

Prominent in this hubbub of technological innovation was 

the elevator. At least as early as 1844 there was a steam elevator 

of sorts installed in the Bunker Hill Monument,^ and George 

H. Fox & Co. was in commercial production of freight 

elevators by the mid-1850s, with considerable business outside 

Boston as well as local.'' Fox was among the first to substitute 

wire hoisting ropes for hemp, in 1852, and the firm introduced 

a number of other improvements. It is Otis Tufts, however, 

who is regarded as the real father of the elevator in Boston. (It 

must be taken as bizarre coincidence that his given name—then 

a common one in New England—was the surname of the one 

man who is most prominent in elevator history and construction.^) 

In synopsizing the early history of the elevator in America, 

Harper's in 1882 noted that Tufts had graduated at the age of 

21 (1825) "at the school of adversity" and then went on to 

post-graduate work at that great school of American mechanical technology, the machine shop of the Proprietors of Locks 

& Canals at Lowell. That experience seems to have launched 

him on his lifelong career as inventor.' Tufts entered the 

elevator field in 1858. The next year he installed what he 

termed a "vertical railway" in New York's Fifth Avenue Hotel. 
NUMBER 50 

FIGURE 6.—^With increasing building heights calling for higher elevator 

speeds and capacities, the rope-geared hydraulic became correspondingly complex. Mains-water pressure generally was inadequate 

fortius high-duty service and the system energy typically was fumished 

by dedicated steam pumps or pumping engines on the premises. To 

provide the fine degree of control necessary for accurate car landing 

from high-speed runs (dependent entirely on operator skill), hydrauhc 

controls became increasingly sophisticated. In the final days of the 

breed, about 1915, the valves commraily were electrically operated. 

Shown is a typical horizontal pushing-type instaUation of about 1910, 

a linear descendent of the Wheeler House elevator. Its steam pump and 

pressure tanks are at the right. (Courtesy of the Otis Elevator Company.) 

i—rr 
8 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

In an apparent attempt at absolute safety—his near-namesake's 

device notwithstanding—he eschewed the "suspension" (ropehung) elevator and embraced a principle that lured a number 

of elevator inventors at various times and places in the 19th 

century—the screw and nut. A nut cannot slide along a screw, 

of course, and in the minds of this group it followed that if a 

spiral shaft of some sort were erected in a building, around it 

were placed a platform or car having lugs that engaged the 

"thread" of the shaft, and the shaft were made to revolve, the 

car would be "screwed" up or down but would remain solidly 

and safely fixed in place when the shaft stopped turning. No 

ropes to break; no water to leak; inherently and absolutely safe, 

it would seem. This surely was an appealing feature in 

attracting a public not yet entirely confident about placing its 

life at the mercy of a hoisting rope or an unseen safety device. 

The Tufts hotel installation was a success but was expensive, 

ponderous (the "screw" was a twenty-inch-diameter shaft of 

cast iron, driven presumably by a steam engine in the basement, 

although that isn't specified), and slow. It was repeated only 

once, in Philadelphia's Continental Hotel. 

Tufts produced a number of other improvements to the 

elevator, including the logical and now-universal concept of 

multiple hoisting ropes (1861). The firm that succeeded Tufts' 

Elevator Works, Moore & Wyman, by the end of the century 

was a major Boston elevator builder that operated in a national 

market. Boston also was the home of Cyrus W. Baldwin, later 

improver of the rope-geared hydraulic and the inventor, about 

1868, of the "water-balance'' elevator. This anomaly, which 

enjoyed a mercifully brief tenure in the annals of elevator 

technology, employed water not under pressure to raise the 

car, but as sheer mass. The car was connected by overhead 

ropes to a large bucket operating in an adjacent shaft. Through 

control ropes the operator could fill the bucket with water from 

a roof tank or empty it. When the combined weight of the 

bucket and water became greater Uian that of the car and its 

passengers, the bucket would descend, causing the car to rise, 

its speed and stopping at intermediate floors controlled only 

by a car brake that gripped the guide rails. If the load were light 

and the operator filled the bucket well beyond the point of 

mere overbalance, the speed of ascent could be breathtaking 

and the operation appallingly dangerous; the same true in the 

descent if the car and bucket loadings were reversed. Although 

fast and efficient, the extra shaftway made the system 

expensive. It was that as much as its liability to misuse that 

brought about the system's rapid abandonment in favor of 

more rational ones. 

The elevator thrived in Boston, a result of the city's 

importance as a commercial, as well as a cultural center. This 

gave rise to hundreds of multi-story warehouses, hotels, 

business blocks, and office buildings in the service of which, 

by the middle of the 1870s, the powered elevator was regarded 

as a necessity radier than an optional amenity. By 1877 

twenty-one elevator manufacturers were doing business in die 

city, the most important of which, in terms of production on a 

nationwide scale, was the Whittier Machine Company, an 

old-line machine-building firm that entered the elevator 

business about 1872 and was absorbed by Otis in 1898 along 

with a number of others at the time of a reorganization that 

formed Otis Bros. & Co. 

Perhaps most telling of Boston's elevator consciousness 

toward the end of the 19di century are the patent statistics, 

shown in Table 1 below. Between August 1880 and January 

1886 the U.S. Patent Office issued 328 patents for elevators 

or direcUy related devices.^^ If the number of patents granted 

per capita in these leading "elevatored" cities can be taken as 

an index of general elevator usage and general level of 

absorption with the technology, we see that by a considerable 

factor Boston led the pack. 

TABLE 1.—Elevator-Invention Prolificity Quotient (E-IPQ), by major city (based on U.S. elevator patents issued 

August 1880-January 1886). 

City 

Boston 

Chicago 

New York 

Philadelphia 

All others 

Total 

Total patents issued 

to residents 

28 

25 

62 

15 

198 

328 

Approx average population, this period 

407,000 

804,000 

2,212,000 

905,000 

E-IPQ 

(patents per capita xlO"^) 

69 

31 

28 

17 

The Back Bay 

As Boston grew in commercial importance during the first 

half of the 19th century, business buildings gradually displaced 

residences in the old central city that occupied the small 

peninsula surrounded by the harbor, the Charles River, and the 

Back Bay immediately to the west. In 1852 the state undertook 

one of the first major municipal improvement schemes in the 

nation, to solve two problems simultaneously. By filling in the 

Back Bay, a useless, shallow, noisome tidal flat would be 

eliminated, and vitally needed new land for building would 

be created. The fill was brought by rail, largely from Needham, 

westof Uiecity.^^ 
NUMBER 50 

The work progressed from the town westward. The cost was 

enormous but in time was more than compensated for by the 

sale of building lots, the state alone profiting more than $5 

million. From the outset the new area, known as the Back 

Bay, was rigidly planned to become an asset to the city. The 

initial scheme incorporated several elegant, wide boulevards 

(Commonwealth Avenue; Boylston Street) and sites for 

churches and important public buildings as well as houses and 

commercial structures of distinction. It was intended Uiat the 

area would be die residential center of the city's well-to-do, a 

goal met in the event and from which there has been only slight 

deviation. 

The first structure erected was the Natural History Building 

(1864) to be followed two years later by the Institute of 

Technology—^predecessor of die Massachusetts Institute of 

Technology—and die rush was on. Prominent architects and 

builders raised houses, churches, and additional public 

buildings at a pace matching die progressing fill, along 

principal and cross streets laid out in a precise grid diat 

contrasted strangely with the haphazard European plan of the 

old town to the east of the Common (Figure 7). In 1866 Charles 

K. Kirby (7-1883), a speculative builder, erected a row of eight 

solid, flve-stor^' brick houses on the south side of Marlborough 

Street, numbers 66 to 80. Early in 1868, No. 72 was sold to 

Alexander S. Wheeler (1820-1907), a Boston attorney of 

some eminence. The house stayed in possession of Wheeler 

descendants until 1932 when it was sold to a family in whose 

hands it remained until purchased in late 1984 by Matdiias B. 

Donelan, M.D. (Figures 8 and 9). It was Dr. Donelan's decision 

to undertake fairly extensive remodeling of the house—to 

which the only previous major alteration apparendy had been 

installation of die elevator itself—that led him, at the 

suggestion of a colleague whose father had made a recent major 

donation to the National Museum of American History, to offer 

the elevator. 

The Offer; The Inspection; The Decision 

Offers of objects are made to museums in many ways. The 

last wUl and testament is a frequent one and perhaps the most 

deUberately formal. At the other end of the scale is the 

spur-of-die-moment, impulsive comment at a cocktail party. 

Not infrequently a donation results only after decades of 

negotiation widi a firm or an individual. Nothing more 

gladdens the curatorial heart, however, than a phone call out 

of the blue offering something totally unexpected and 

(sounding as though) absolutely fitting. Dr. Donelan's call 

early in December of 1984 was such a one. What he seemed 

to be describing as no longer wanted was a horizontal-cylinder, 

rope-geared hydraulic elevator, just like die big ones but writ 

very small. This appeared to be an unlooked-for opportunity 

to collect the actual hardware of a vasdy significant technology 

having national implications, created to museum scale. 

Dr. Donelan does not, of course, speak elevator any more 

fluentiy than I speak plastic surgery, so while the gist seemed 

clear from our conversation it was necessary to confirm die 

details. I visited the house several days later, to find everything 

even better than described or imagined. Certainly the house 

was largely as built, the plan unaltered odier dian to 

accommodate the elevator. More importantly, the elevator itself 

conformed precisely to the picture drawn in my mind's eye: a 

perfect miniature installation of a rope-geared hydraulic 

seemingly of about the late 1880s or early 1890s. 

The car, nicely finished in oak paneling with a spindle-work 

clerestory, could accommodate one person seated on a 

fold-down bench or two narrow people standing (Figures 10 

and 11). The run was from die first floor to the third, suggesting 

installation for an invalid. Control was by an operating rope 

passing through the car and over small sheaves at the top and 

bottom of the shaft. The fitting of the system into the existing 

house had been done with considerable art, to a degree that it 

could have been taken by the unwary as original. The feature 

that made diis possible was the perfect stacking of fairly roomy 

closets on die first diree floors so that a shaft was produced 

merely by knocking out the two intermediate closet floors and 

slighdy reworking the floor framing around the openings. The 

hoisting and counterweight sheaves at the top of the shaft were 

fitted simply into a low cabinet on die floor of a fourth-floor 

badiroom. The original closet doors became the three shaft 

doors, apparently with no modification needed. 

Architecturally the job was masterful, although involving 

one or two minor structural gaffes that only revealed 

themselves later. The heart of the installation lay, of course, 

in die English basement This floor, in the traditional manner, 

originally had been devoted to the service areas of the house, 

containing kitchen, laundry, furnace room, and so forth. What 

probably had been a small storage room partiy beneath the 

basement stairs and direcdy under the closet stack had been 

converted to die elevator machine room. There were placed the 

two principal mechanical organs of die system: the hydraulic 

cyUnder and die control valve (Figures 13 and 14). 

Reeved above and below the cylinder—which was about 

four feet long and eighteen inches in diameter—was the single 

hoisting rope, passing over its two sets of sheaves: the fixed 

ones attached to the head of the cylinder and the movable ones 

opposite, d-aveling their course at the end of the piston rod. 

The ratio of increased travel of the hoisting rope's end 

compared to the piston's travel—die "gear"—was 8 to 1. Thus, 

the approximately 3V2 feet of piston su-oke produced about 

28 feet of car u^vel, appropriate for a two-story run in a house 

with very high ceilings. 

The operating rope was guided to and from the large sheave 

on die control valve by small sheaves on the ceiling of the 

machine room. The water-supply and waste pipes disappeared 

through die basement floor into a crawl space below.^^ The 

installation was absolutely textbook, a tiny exemplar of the 

late 19di century's primary elevator technology. 

The what of the elevator had now been answered; its why 
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NUMBER 50 11 

FIGURE 8.—^The Wheeler-Donelan House at 72 Marlborough Street, Back Bay. The snow-covered stairs lead 

to No. 72 in this 1985 photograph. 
12 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 9.—First-floor plan of the Wheeler-Donelan House when purchased by Dr. Donelan. The original dining 

room—so designated here—by this time had been converted to a kitchen and general-purpose room. In the original plan the kitchen was in the basement, directly below the dining room, with service between the two areas 

by a dumb waiter in the large closet in the dining room's NW comer. 

was a minor matter that most likely arose from invalidism or 

increasing infirmity on the part of the aging Wheelers. What 

was particularly troubling at this early stage was the inability 

to discover when or by whom it had been installed. Dr. Donelan 

had inherited almost no documents widi the house and none 

concerning the elevator. There was no record of its history 

except a bit of lore passed on to him by the seller, who believed 

that it had ceased operating in 1942 when "somediing jammed, 

and what with the war on they felt diat it would be unpatriotic 

to have it repaired." It hadn't run since. This was confirmed 

by the fact that the car reposed about two feet above its proper 

landing at the second-floor level (Figure 10). 

Thus, there was no hard evidence as to the date of installation 

and nothing on which to base an estimate except the general 

ambiance of the car and machinery. 

Most of all, we would have liked to know who had been the 

audior of so wonderful a thing. There was not a mark on the 

cylinder or anywhere else about the installation accessible to 

the eye; not even a ghost image indicating the presence of a 

name plate that had been removed. There were not even pattern 

numbers in the castings or other incidental markings of any 

sort. The system was clean, the anonymity perfect. 

On the assumption that the needed approval to collect the 

elevator would be forthcoming from die Museum's Collections 

Committee, I began to consider the means for removal. The 

diminutive scale of nearly all components suggested that the 

physical problems would be minor; the principal one would 

be cost at a time of thin budgets. The process of recording the 

system and its removal were of necessity undertaken sooner 

and a bit more frenetically than would normally have been the 

case, as Dr. Donelan was obliged to carry on the house 

rehabilitation project with all haste. Both projects were 

conducted during the first few months of 1985 in the rigors of 

a typical Boston winter. The recording was a relatively simple 

matter. In the course of a January weekend two NMAH curators 

and industrial historian Peter Stott (then of the Massachusetts 

Historical Commission) measured and drew all of the system's 

components and the contiguous, related elements of the house. 

On the following Monday Historic American Engineering 

Record photographer. Jet Lowe, covered everything with 

large-format (4x5) photography, his services generously 

contributed by HAER under its policy of having its 

photographers record worthy sites and structures when akeady 

in an area on a major project of its own. The resulting 18 

negatives are incorporated into HAER's photographic holdings 

and provide a valuable addition to the Museum's documentary 

record of die elevator.^^ The field sketches made by the 

measuring party have not yet been translated into formal 

drawings but have been used to prepare a provisional sketch 

drawing showing the general arrangement of the elevator, 

reproduced as Figure 15. A final element of the elevator's 

graphic recording consists of about 200 35-mm photographs 

showing details and components, made during the measuring 

and removal work. 

With the graphic documentation of the elevator in situ 

completed and formal permission to collect it granted by the 

Collections Committee, the way was cleared for removal. The 

Museum cond-acted for the work with Manitou Machine Works 

of Cold Spring, N.Y. Manitou, a small firm of historical 

mUlwrights, is one of the few in this rather esoteric line of 

work, having general practical expertise in and sensitivity for 

historic machinery to a degree that we felt confident about 

putting the job in dieir hands. The work was carried out over 

four days in mid-January 1985 with a crew of three. During its 

course a number of interesting details came to light, revealing 

a good bit about the conduct of the original installation.^"^ The 

principal revelation was that despite the skillful job of 

architecturally blending the elevator into the house, the 

structural accommodation was somewhat less than scrupulous 

at several points. The first of these was in the support of the 
NUMBER 50 13 

FIGURE 10.—^The Wheeler elevator in its final resting place just above the second-floor level, where it reposed, 

uiunoving, from 1942 until its ultimate removal in February of 1985, having settled there as a result of the 

"jam." The small panel was fitted to prevent objects (and people) from faUing down the shaft from the space 

beneath the car. The stacked closets on the house's first three floors seem to have been planned almost with a 

future elevator shaft in mind. As a result of this feature, minimal architectural modification was required when 

the elevator was installed some 36 years later. The original closet doors served readily as the elevator shaft 

doors. Against the right shaft-door jamb, mid-height of the car, is seen the gas cock to which was attached the 

flexible mbber hose that supplied gas for the car's ceiling light in the original installation. The hose and light 

fixture were removed, presumably when the house was wired sometime after the elevator was installed. (Jet 

Lowe photograph for the Historic American Engineering Record, 1985.) 
14 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 11.—The car interior. AU is original except the ceiUng Hght, its switch, and the folding car gate which 

probably was added at the insistence of the city's elevator inspector. (Jet Lowe.) 
NUMBER 50 15 

FIGURE 12.—Looking down on the car from the third-floor level, showing the diagonally set guide rails; the 

attachment of the single hoisting rope to the Otis-type broken-rope safety within the hoisting beam; the part of 

the hoisting rope running between the basement and the overhead hoisting sheave (to the right of the rear guide 

rail); and the two parts of the operating-rope loop (at left). On the car roof are seen the armored cable for the 

electric light and adjacent to it the gas pipd for the original light, left in place when the modification was made. 

(Jet Lowe.) 
16 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 13.—The operating valve and head end of the power cyUnder. The water supply and discharge lines 

pass through the floor below. The large pipe extending upward is the lower part of a closed air chamber to 

prevent water hammer if the valve were closed suddenly. The attachment of the hoisting rope's fixed end is seen 

on top of the cylinder. Above the operating valve is the home-made register that metered the travel of the piston 

and thus, by conversion, the water consiuned by the elevator. There was no sign of its connection with the 

crosshead at the time of removal. (Jet Lowe.) 
NUMBER 50 17 

FIGURE 14.—^The traveling sheaves and their inner guide raU, tucked neaUy beneath the bottom ran of the 

basement stairs. (Jet Lowe.) 

overhead sheaves carrying the hoisting and counterweight 

ropes. Each sheave was borne by a floor pedestal resting 

direcdy on the floor of the badiroom above the elevator 

hoistway, die sheaves covered by a simple removable wood 

cabinet. As neither die flooring nor the plaster of die hoistway 

ceiling below apparendy were disturbed during die installation, 

it seems that the four holes—to pass the two parts each of the 

single hoisting rope and the counterweight rope—were drilled 

up from the hoistway ceiling after having been located by 

plumbing down die shaft. Such situations then obviously were 

subject to the same laws of inevitability as they would be 

today: the part of the counterweight rope from the car was in 

direct alignment with a floor joist. 

The installers did what any right-diinking mechanics 

working on a fixed-price contract would have done under die 

circumstances—they drilled a lV4-inch hole for the rope right 
^^^J^?^^^^5^1^^^^?:^^?P^^^^^P^^^^ iy-^^-^-^.- — (A^^ • V - -' ;<^- —v^"vy/^7^^-r//^ v •"^^<^-^' 

SECTION ON HOISTWAY CENTER LINE, 

LOOKING EAST (TOWARD THE COMMON) 

SECTION ON HOISTWAY CENTER LINE. 

LOOKING NORTH (TOWARD STREET) 

FIGURE 15.—General arrangement of the elevator in place, based on the sketches made before removal. Note: 

Car gas-fixture and flexible gas tube not present, 1985. 
NUMBER 50 19 

FIGURE 16.—Manitou Machine Works crew dismantling and removing the operating valve, Febraary 1985. 

through the joist. Given even the full two-inch scanding of the 

mid-19di century diis left so litUe of the timber's substance 

that under the working load of die car and counterweight (some 

1000 pounds) carried onto it through the sheave pedestals, it 

faded completely. If this didn't occur with the first use of the 

system it must have soon afterward. Plainly it was the 

legendary robustness of die American system of timber framing 

that saved the installation from disaster. The load of the 

pedestals simply was transferred to die adjacent joists through 

the layers of sub and finish flooring, and perhaps the floor 

bridging, although widi an appreciable subsidence of the floor 

around this crucial spot. 

Equally inelegant workmanship was evident at the system's 

lower reaches, the consequence of a similar condition. The 

same Law of Framing-Member Occurrence placed a floor joist 

precisely below the control valve in the basement machine 

room, interfering with die large-bore water supply and waste 

lines. The response was, naturally, die same as it had been 

upstairs. But here the elevator builders had added a curious 

twist. While die offending joist was completely cut through at 

the heavy head and control end of the cylinder, at the 

considerably lighter end opposite, where the movable-sheave 

carriage traveled on its guide rads, a pair of heavy, 

five-inch-wide joists had been laid into die floor framing. 

Compounding this curious state of structural imbalance, widi 

the flooring of die machine room completely removed during 

the installation process to provide full access to the crawl space 

below, there was no agency for transferring the load from the 

disabled joist to die adjoining ones (nor was any diagonal 

bridging present). As an inevitable consequence the entire floor 

system at that end of die room had subsided two inches! Some 

of the weight of the control valve and cylinder (rigidly joined 

by their interconnecting piping) was carried by the pipe hangers 

that supported the supply and waste lines from other joists 

nearby, it is true, but taken together this aspect of the job was 

distinctiy casual. 

Nearly all else about the work was first-class, however. The 

alignment of die hoisting, counterweight, and cond"ol ropes 

(all of wire rope, not fiber) was perfect, and the architectural 

adaptation of the machinery to its basement room was on a par 

with the finer finish of the work above stairs. The machinery 

all had been neady hidden within well-fitted cabinetry, with 

all critical parts accessible through doors or removable panels. 

(None of this work was preserved in the removal.) 
20 SMITHSONTAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 17.—The power cylinder with its piston and piston rod being loaded. The fatal, final "jam" in the system 

lies here, for the piston defied aU attempts to move it within the cyUnder during the removal process. 
NUMBER 50 21 

RGURE 18.—Arrival of the elevator at the National Museum of American History, "knocked-down." 

A final instance of curiously indifferent structural work 

revealed itself during removal of the car from the bottom of 

the hoistway at the job's end. It was our wish to preserve 

several short sections of the car guide-rails to serve as models 

when (if?) the system is installed as an exhibit in die Museum. 

These simple sections of lV2-inch-square hard pine, which it 

might be expected would have been attached to the shaft walls 

quite solidly, in fact came away with almost no effort, having 

been litde more than nailed into the existing walls widi no 

apparent reference to studs or other structural members. Of 

course, in normal service diey carried none of the car's weight. 

Even any lateral force on diem would have been minimal if the 

load in the car were more or less central. The rail sections thus 

would have done litde more than bear their own weight as they 

were stacked up die height of the shaft. But recall their 

secondary function: that of sustaining the car and its load in 

the event of a hoisting-rope faUure, die entire weight of the car 

thrown suddenly onto die rails as they were gripped by the 

"broken-rope" safety—as demonsu^ated with such celebrity by 

E.G. Otis those many years earlier at New York. 

Had such an occurrence taken place with the car near die top 

of die run, it is easy to imagine that the lightiy attached guide 

rails would have buckled, sending car and passengers to the 

bottom. We may assume that they never were tested in that 

fashion, and diat if the installers had demonstrated die system's 

safety for their own and perhaps the Wheelers' satisfaction, the 

test was performed with the car scarcely above the bottom of 

the run at the first floor! 

Although most of the removal job was routine—for such 

work—from the outset Manitou's proprietor, Tom Rick, was 

plagued by a concern that the elevator's water-supply line—of 

three-inch diameter and widi die potential for very quickly 

conducting a Niagara into the crawl space and die basement— 

had been stopped off not at die main but at a quick-opening/quickclosing valve placed just upstream of die main control valve. 

This was part of a safeguard that prevented overtravel of the 

car at the top of its run, the normally open valve being closed 

by the traveling-sheave carriage if the regular stop system on 

the operating rope failed. As this valve was an important—if 

secondary—organ of die system we naturally wished to recover 

it. But if it turned out to be the sole barrier between the Donelan 

house and die water supply of Boston, its peremptory removal 

would have brought instantaneous disaster to the premises, to 

Manitou, and to the Museum. 
22 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

To determine conditions in the supply line, Rick drilled a 

small test hole in the pipe just above die valve. This revealed 

diat the line was neither dry, as hoped, nor under mains 

pressure, as feared. Rather, a small volume of 43-year-old 

residual water dribbled out, nevertheless giving assurance diat 

the supply had indeed been stopped off well beyond the 

elevator, apparently at a large gate valve later discovered partly 

buried in the dirt under the front steps of the house. 

Although die process of removing the elevator system turned 

up a number of interesting details about its own design and 

construction and its relationship to the house itself, the one 

thing we had hoped would be revealed as the previously hidden 

surfaces of its components were exposed to view remained 

obscure. Nowhere was there the slightest indication of the 

elevator's builder, a major disappointment 

The entire elevator system—cylinder, control valve, car, and 

all small parts were loaded on the Manitou truck and in due 

course arrived at the Museum where they currentiy are in 

storage pending future exhibition. 

Post-Removal Investigations 

With the Boston elevator securely preserved at the National 

Museum, there remained to be answered those questions of its 

paternity, its precise age, and its place in die history of vertical 

transportation in Boston, or at least in die Back Bay. 

In die total absence of internal documentary or archeological 

evidence, the means for answering die vexing issues of the 

elevator's source and date of construction appeared to lie in 

local historical records, if anywhere. The point of departure 

was the city directory, one of the most useful resources for any 

inquiry on urban history. The Boston directory for 1888, 

selected as a time diat seemed roughly consistent with the date 

of the installation, listed a good number of elevator builders, 

both well-known national firms with Boston branches or 

agents, and smaller, strictly local firms. As did most directories 

of die time, Boston's carried numerous ads for the fu"ms listed 

in its classified section, these as useful historically as the 

personal and commercial listings themselves. Several of the 

elevator builders had advertised, but one large display ad drew 

the eye like a magnet (Figure 19). It had been placed by E. 

Brewer who billed himself as a manufacturer of "hydraulic and 

steam elevators, hand elevators, hydraulic dumb waiters, [and] 

small passenger elevators for private residences, [widi] invalid 

elevators a specialty..." (my emphasis). It was the only ad widi 

this particular message. Other builders offered their services 

E. BI^E^VSrEI^ 

MANUFACTUKEK OF 

ELEVATORS 

HYDRAULIC and STEAM ELEVATORS, HAND 

ELEVATORS. BELT ELEVATORS, 

HYDRAULIC DUMB WAITERS, SMALL PASSKNGKU KLKVATORS FOR PRIVATE RESIDENCES. 

INVALI D ELKVATTOR ^ A. SI^ECIALTV . 

ELEVATOR GATES AND GUARDS. ELEVATOR SAFETY DEVICES AND ALL KINDS OF ELEVATOR ROPES. 

All Repairs pipmptly attended to. Elevators manufactured to suit all localities and all purposes, for Hotels. Offices, Buildings, Stores, Warehouses and 

Private Residences. 

OFP'IOE S = 

267 Federal St., Boston. 135 Spring St., New York. 

SEN D FOR CIRCULAR. 

FIGURE 19.—Elias Brewer's city directory advertisement of 1888 that, before it had been confirmed, made his 

authorship of the Wheeler House elevator appear so strong a Hkelihood. Brewer's New York "office" was a 

short-hved venture, although he did do a modest amount of business there in the 1880s. 
NUMBER 50 23 

essentially for commercial installations: office buildings, 

apartment houses, stores, hotels, and factories. 

Elias Brewer, with a downtown Boston address, was listed 

as an elevator builder first in the 1877 directory, advertised first 

in 1883, and with occasional address changes was carried well 

into the 20th century. Despite die complete lack of any 

evidence linking Brewer with the Wheeler-Donelan House 

elevator, the ad was compelling and the temptation to make 

the connection was powerful. Remember that name. 

Investigation at Uterally all historical agencies in the city 

that might have shed light on the matter netted nothing. 

Especially disappointing was to find no references to the house 

in a large collection of 19di century building-permit fUes at the 

Boston Public Library. At the point when all leads seemed 

exhausted, it occurred to me—or was it to Peter Stott of the 

Historical Commission?—diat perhaps die tiiith was to be 

found not in the architecture but the water. It was because the 

elevator drew far more water than could be supplied by the 

house's one-inch supply line that die special diree-inch Une 

had been run in from the eight-inch street main at the time of 

the installation. Clearly diat would have required full 

collaboration by the water department and almost certainly a 

permit. Investigation by Stott at die Boston Water & Sewerage 

Commission (present-day successor to the Boston Water 

Department, as it then was) revealed that, indeed, records 

pertaining to individual buildings were kept in what were 

known as the "Premise Files," the earlier fUes retained in a 

warehouse in the near suburb of Forest Hills. 

While it is likely that most—^perhaps all—of the city's 

records had been destroyed in Boston's Great Fire of 1877, the 

Premise Files seemingly had escaped subsequent losses. And 

there, in the appropriate box for lower Marlborough Street, 

was die folder for No. 72. And there, mirabile dictu, did lie the 

original Elevator Service Apphcation, requesting that die street 

main be tapped for a three-inch service pipe. The apphcation, 

in the name of Alexander Wheeler, had been made by...£. 

Brewer & Co! It had been submitted on 28 May and approved 

on 26 June...7902 (Figure 20); the two principal questions 

answered in a single document. Surprising was die fact diat the 

installation had been made at least ten years later than we had 

supposed, leading a colleague to observe that we had 

miscalculated by not merely a decade, but a century.^^ 

The application supplied not only the who and the when, 

but, by inference, the why of die elevator. By 1902 Alexander 

Wheeler would have been 82 years old and his wife presumably 

of about an age, suggesting diat either it was invalidism or 

perhaps only a wish to avoid stair climbing diat had prompted 

this major alteration to their house. 

Elevators in Back Bay 

Despite dieir considerable height and number of stories, 

Back Bay houses were not built incorporating elevators untd 

the early 1880s, aldiough Bunting reports that after 1895 rarely 

was a cosdy house built widiout one, regardless of its height.'^ 

From a fairly early period, however, presumably as made 

feasible by advancing elevator technology, post-construction 

installations were common. The first elevators in the area were 

installed in two apartment houses, apparently when built in 

1871, but die first in a Back Bay residence did not appear untU 

five years later, as a modification. In diis early period the lift 

was viewed not as a substitute for stair cUmbing but as a purely 

utditarian device for hoisting trunks and large furniture. 

Accordingly it was relegated to the rear areas of die house. 

But widi die gradual erosion of the Puritan ethic, brought on, 

we may suppose, by the proliferation of passenger elevators 

in stores and other commercial buildings downtown, the 

attitude toward powered vertical transportation at home became 

more accepting. It is entirely possible, too, that as in die (later) 

case of die Wheelers, those householders who had moved into 

the initial sections of die district in the 1860s, by die 1880s 

were in their sixties and seventies and quite wdUng to 

recognize the benefits of mechanically assisted access to the 

sleeping floors. 

Whatever the motivations—perhaps mere submission to 

fashion in some cases—the insertion of elevators into Back 

Bay's private houses prohferated during the last quarter of the 

century. Because the records of the building-inspection, 

elevator-inspection, and water departments all are extremely 

spotty for diat period, it is impossible to fix any hard numbers, 

but it appears that there must have been something like a 

hundred residential elevators in Back Bay by the turn of the 

century, counting bodi original and supplemental installations. 

Introduction of many of the latter was eased by the same 

architectural factor that had rendered the Wheeler project so 

sffaightforward: the common existence of full-height light 

wells and tiered closets in the early row houses, providing 

ready-made or easdy adapted hoistways. 

The vast majority of these systems were hydraulic. Water 

remained the medium of choice for the propulsion of Boston's 

elevators untd well into die new century. Aldiough there is no 

breakdown of die few avaUable statistics by district, a variety 

of evidence makes it clear that electricity's inroad into the 

elevatoring of die Back Bay was slow and uneasy. More will 

be said of diis widi particular regard to the Wheeler House 

installation. 

The avadable figures on hydraulic elevators in the city as a 

whole, shown in graphic form (Figure 21), do not reveal 

anything about area, size of individual installation, type of 

system (rope-geared or plunger), or (particularly unfortunate) 

comparison widi electric elevators. Hence, they are not terribly 

informative on the questions of hydraulic vs. electric 

installations over time, or on geographical distribution within 

the city. But it is possible to draw some speculative 

conclusions. As with almost all change, the transition from 

hydraulic to electric power for elevators was gradual, a 

consequence of the fact that the technical pros and cons of 

each widi respect to the other were fairly evenly balanced untU 
24 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

/^^^xCiT Y OF BOSTON.—WATE R DEPARTMENT-INCOM E DIVISION . 

i t 

^ELEVATOR 

to' /C 

SERVICE APPLICATION. 

Boston, yi'f '^X-'<-t *—^ 

To the Water Commissioner: 

190 2-, 

SIR, — The undersigned hereby applies for a service pipe to supply water 

for Elevator — Motor — purposes at premises, owned by him situated on > 

STREET, COURT or PLACE 

Number or direction... . 

Size of service pipe required 

'.t 

7 2— 

CJ;p i^ ^-^ 

^ -^-i J Ward * ^ 

Pipe to eater from 

No 

No. Y^j^^ 

. ... «__> '"^^^ 

^^.A. Amount, 

REGULATIONS FOR SERVICE PIPES , 

1. The desired point of entrance for the pipe must be designated within two days from the date of this 

application, otlierwise the laying ot the pipe will be delayed until such time as the desired information is received 

the department. 

2. No water shall be used through any water service pipe until the service pipe, the piping Inside the building and the water fixtures have been approved by the Water Department, nor shall any water be used through any 

such pipe for experimental or testing purposes, or for any purposes other than those for which such pipe ia 

installed, except by special permission of the Water Commissioner and under such restrictions and conditions 

as he may determine. 

3. No alteration or extension of pipe inside the building shall be commenced until three hours after written 

notice thereof, giving description of the alteration or extension contemplated, has been left at the office of the 

Water Department. 

4. No pipe or arrangement of pipes shall be made by which the high and low water service systems 

will be (.onnected. 

5. A registering apparatus satisfactory to the Water Commissioner shall be placed and maintained where 

approved by him, for the purposes of measuring tbe quantity of water used by the elevator or motor ; said 

apparatus to be adjusted to accuracy before it is used. 

0. Service pipes for supplying water lo elevators or motors will be connected with the low pressure 

supply only. 

This applicant is the owner of the estate and agrees — that he will pay all bills for the water 

supplied through the pipe applied for in this application;—that he will conform to ali rules and 

regulations now or hereafter adopted by the Water Commissioner relating to pipes or the use of water; 

—that upon any violation of such rules or regulations the Commissioner may withhold the use of water at 

once, without further notice; and — that neither the City nor its agents or employees are to be held 

responsible for any damage resulting from pipes or the laying or placing thereof, or from water, or from 

any withholding of the water for any cause or reason. 

>i h !^^^^^..^ 

_.. [j ^lAJi^t^i^O) ^ (L^^ 

Owner of Premises. 

Address.. 

FIGURE 20.—The application for the Wheeler House elevator's water line, 1902, the sole evidence as to the 

builder and date of the elevator. 
NTJMBER 50 25 

36 

34 

32 

30 

28 

X 

z 

O 26 

H 

< 

^ 22 

z: 

" 2D 

s 18 

; 

'i 

i / 

/ 

/ 

/ / / 

t\ 

n 

• 

\ . / 

V 

/ 

^ 1 

/ -

• 

HYDRAULIC ELEVATORS IN BOSTON 

.' \ 

'' 

/"'•~V 

REQUESTS FOR NEW SERVICE PIPES 

NEW ELEVATORS INSTALLED 

NO. OF ELEVATORS UNDER 

WATER DEPT. SUPERVISION 

\ 

' 

--. . 

T^' N "V 

/.. 

\ \ \ \ 

\ \ \ \ 

> \ 

\ 

Y .A 

Is \ \ 

-\-- ^ 

> 

OC 

600 u 

1894 1896 1898 1900 1902 1904 1906 1908 1910 1912 1914 1916 19U 1920 

590 

580 

570 

560 

550 

540 

530 

520 

510 

500 

X, 

FIGURE 21.—The presence of the hydrauhc elevator in Boston, 1894-1920. The three curves together provide 

a general qualitative sense of the gradual decline of the type, but only the figures for new installations reflect 

with any precision the slate of affairs at a given time. The discrepancies among new installations, requests for 

service pipes (tappings into the mains), and water-department supervision (mains-water consumption and billing) 

arise from the fact that water under pressure for most large installations was supphed by house pumping 

equipment, not the dty. The spurt of new installations around 1912 almost certainly resulted from a brief surge 

of interest in the large-scale direct-plunger hydraulic, the water elevator's last gasp before total dominance of 

the field by electricity. (From annual reports of the Water Commissioner and Inspector of Buildings.) 

around the first world war. It will be seen that the number of 

hydraulics installed hit a spectacular peak in 1901-1902— 

coincidendy the very time of the Wheeler House installation 

(Figure 21). The cause of this is unknown, but likely it was the 

result of a non-technological factor. The erection of just a few 

major office buildings, each having a large bank of elevators, 

would account for it, for example, as the actual increase in 

number of elevators over the previous and succeeding averages 

is on the order of only twelve or so. The 1911-1912 peak 

probably can be accounted for by several major direct-plunger 

installations, in office buildings, there being a distinct boom 

in popularity of die type just then. 

The disparity between the number of elevator installations 

and the figures for service-pipe requests and number of 

elevators under water-department supervision certainly results 

from the fact that the large commercial systems, involving very 

high rises and heavy service, were of necessity furnished their 

water not by the city mains but by steam pumping plants on 

the premises. 

Clearest of all is diat by the post-war period the era of the 
26 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

Colyer s Improved Self-A ding 

Hydraulic Passenger Lifts. 

These Lifts are fitted up with F. COLYER'S Improvements, viz. :— 

There are no Girders of any description overhead. 

The Chains are sunk in grooves in the side walls. 

The Counter-Balances slide in guide irons. 

The Movement is steady and noiseless . 

The Stopping and Starting Gear are at all times perfectly 

under control. Self-acting gear fitted top and bottom. 

NOTE.—Six Lifts of this class have been fitted up by 

F. COLYER at the St. Thomas's Hospital. 

ADVANTAGES SECURED : 

ABSOLUTE SAFETY. 

PERFECT FREEDOM FROM SHOCK OR VIBRATION. 

VERY EASY MOTION AND FREEDOM FROM NOISE. 

A RE PERFECTLY UNDER CONTROL. 

SOLE MANUFACTURERS: 

GEORG E V/ALLE R AN D CO. , 

ENGINEERS AN D MACHINISTS, 

PHCENI X ENGINEERIN G WORKS , 

HOLLAN D STREET, LONDON , S.E.; 

AND AT STROUD, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 

FIGURE 22.—The direct-plunger hydraulic elevator, because of its inherent simpHcity in low-rise appUcations, 

has been popular nearly since the introduction of hydrauhc power for hoisting, continuing to the present (today 

invariably with oil rather than water as the medium). The direct plunger's clearly apparent safety also accounted 

for its appeal—especially in Europe, where the distrust of any form of suspended elevator remained a factor of 

selection until weU into the 20th century ("Much safer to have the car pushed up from below than dangling at 

the end of a rope, wouldn't you say...?"). (From Spons' Engineers' and Contractors' Illustrated Book of Prices 

of Machinery.. .for 1876 [London, 1876].) 
NUMBER 50 27 

hydraulic was essentially over. In 1919 (the year shown as 

1920), new service-pipe requests were at zero, installations 

were at merely two (oddly, up from one die previous year), and 

the number of elevators under water-department supervision— 

i.e., being billed for mains-water—had leveled off at a bit above 

510. This latter figure was well down from die high of 592 in 

1904 (1905), a fourteen percent drop in fifteen years. The 

considerable significance of diis is diat existing hydraulics 

were being taken from service or converted to electric power 

in appreciable numbers. ^'^ It cannot be said what proportion of 

these were small residential lifts and what were larger ones in 

apartment and commercial buddings, but it is logical that it 

was the latter being converted as electric drive and control 

made possible self service, savings resulting from which could 

have been expected quickly to recover the conversion costs. 

The Wheeler-Brewer Decision: Hydraulic or Electric? 

Once die Wheelers had made the major decision to install 

vertical transportation in their house, they remained faced widi 

a second decision nearly as daunting: what form of motive 

power for die lift? We have seen that at diat time—just after 

die turn of the century—there were only two choices, 

seemingly on about a par. The electric elevator definitely 

had arrived and by no means could it be regarded as a mere 

novelty, untried and unreliable. If electricity for Ughting had 

materialized on a commercial scale in the larger cities by the 

mid-1880s, die electric elevator wasn't far behind. 

Edison's legendary Pearl Street (New York) generating 

station opened for business in September 1882, and in early 

1886 the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Boston 

energized its initial lines supplying customers in the immediate 

downtown area. By that autumn the mains had reached the 

Back Bay, including Marlborough St.^^ As diough waiting in 

the wings for die magic moment, the electric elevator leapt 

forth almost immediately. Electrical World reported early in 

October—meaning diat the installation had been made several 

months earlier—that Boston's Union Institution for Savings 

had installed a three-quarter ton electric freight elevator to 

serve its five or six stories, powered from die sparkling new 

Edison mains.^^ This actually was a proto-electric elevator—as 

was the case with many during that pioneer period—the 

hoisting mechanism consisting of a standard worm-gear-anddrum mechanical unit of the type (like the teagle) widely used 

in mills and factories, driven by belt from die line shafting. 

Here die role of the line shaft simply was taken by a 

five-horsepower Sprague motor. Even the control remained 

unchangedly mechanical, the operating rope in the car shifting 

the machine's drive belt among three puUies for raising, 

lowering, and holding, thus avoiding the vagaries of electric 

cond^ol (Figure 23). 

In 1892 die Boston building department, in charge of 

inspecting elevators, made 12 inspections of electric passenger 

elevators (against 163 hydraulic and 59 steam). Only 11 years 

later the same numbers were 521, 646, and 74.^0 Now these 

figures may mislead, for they are numbers of inspections, not 

elevators, and it seems likely diat certain elevators—say those 

in public buildings—were inspected more frequendy than the 

once-annually minimum. (This would account, too, for the 

curious occurrence of more steam-elevator inspections at the 

later dian the earUer date). 

Perhaps most intriguing of all is diat Elias Brewer, at least 

as early as 1895—seven years before the Wheeler House 

job—was advertising hydraulic and electric elevators. 

Thus, from every practical and technological viewpoint it 

would appear that the project could have gone either way: by 

1902 the electricity service was in place; die technology of the 

electric elevator was not only up to but well beyond a job of 

this scale in terms of capacity and control; and the contractor 

by his own declaration was involved in the line with a 

respectable period of experience behind him. Assuming diat 

Brewer was unbiased in regard to motive power (actually, an 

unknown factor), let us examine the possible reasons for the 

choice of what could be viewed as a mildly retardataire system 

at the Wheeler's. First, despite die apparent availabdity of the 

technology, there may have been a practical problem that stood 

in the way of an electric elevator at No. 72. Aldiough the Back 

Bay was served by the Edison Company, it is possible that the 

mains capacity—intended for a principally, if not exclusively, 

lighting load—simply was too low for power loading. The 

concept of selling electricity for power purposes came late to 

many of die pioneer lighting companies. It is perfecdy 

believable diat the illuminating company, recognizing die 

firmly established position of the hydraulic elevator in that 

residential part of the city, did not feel it worth the expense of 

upgrading its Back Bay mains to accommodate motor loads, 

and actually discouraged the installation of electric elevators. 

In contrast, Boston's available water volume, mains 

pressure, pumping capacity, and reservoir capacity were the 

equal of any city in die world. As early as 1873 die Water 

Board held a special hearing on the subject of "Water 

Elevators" in recognition of the already widespread use of the 

devices. Among other things, die Board voted: 

That an independent indicator or register for determining the quantity of water 

used... shall be attached to each cylinder...and that the price for the water used 

for elevating purposes shall be al the rate of ten cents per hundred gallons.^^ 

The City SoUcitor immediately determined diat the Board 

had exceeded its audiority in setting die price, and reduced the 

figure to the maximum allowed for metered water: three cents 

per hundred gallons. At that rate the water cost for a full 

two-story round trip on the Wheeler elevator—using about 15 

gallons of water, would have been barely half a cent, a bargain 

even then. 

But even had there been parity of capacity between the two 

energy sources, and even had the price of electricity been as 

low as that of the water for an equivalent amount of supplied 

power—which it would not have been—there is good reason 
28 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

FIGURE 23.—The first use of electricity in elevator service 

was for the driving of conventional mechanical machines, 

mostly in factories and mills, after about 1880, a motor 

simply replacing the line shaft as the source of motive 

power. Usually—to avoid the temperamental electric 

controls of the time—the motor ran continuously; control 

of the car or platform continued to be, as with line-shaft 

drive, by mechanical shifting between crossed and open 

belts. (From Brackett et al., "Electricity in Everyday Life," 

Scribner's Magazine, 1891:127.) 

to suppose that the Wheelers stUl would have opted for a 

hydraulic elevator rather than an electric, based on their own 

layman's comparative perceptions of the two technologies. 

Electricity, aldiough commercially fully established by 1902 

with a two-decade history of central municipal supply, still 

was seen by most people as a force of vast mystery. If present 

day experience with high technology can be taken as a guide, 

it would be fair to assume diat the degree of bafflement over 

and distrust of electricity at diat time would be in direct 

proportion to the age of the beholder. Bunting notes that the 

servant call bells at No. 72 never were electrified,^^ and 

although Marie Carden's HABS survey of the house reports 

that it was wired for electric lighting in the nineties, she gives 

no evidence for the date.^^ Inasmuch as the light in die elevator 

originally was gas, attested to by gas-pipe remnants in both the 

car and at the mid-point of the shaft where the flexible supply 

hose would have been attached, it can be inferred that die house 

was not wired until after the elevator installation, perhaps even 

following Wheeler's deadi in 1907. 

But even supposing die house to have been wired for light 

by 1902, it is easy enough to imagine the Wheelers, in 

consultation with Elias Brewer, declaring that whUe electric 

lights might be one thing, an electric elevator was quite 

another! Water was, after all, a substance as common, familiar, 

and tangible as life itself. It was non-threatening, non-ledial, 

and its behavior was absolutely comprehensible. Furthermore, 

the hydraulic elevator, in widespread use all over the Back 

Bay, might reasonably have been taken to be as reliable as any 

mechanical device possibly could be. 

Imagine the comparisons that might have been drawn by the 
NUMBER 50 29 

Morse,

BUILDERS OF 

 Williams & Co., 

PASSENGER 

AND 

FREIGHT ELEVATORS 

ELECTRIC ELEVATOR. 

Write us for Circulars and Prices. 

Mai n Office an d NA/orks, 110S Frankfor d Avenue , 

PHILADELPHIA. 

FIGURE 24.—The electric elevator in its first fuUy rational, "all-electric" form, about 1895. Because a winding 

drum remained the hoisting element, the run stdl was hmited, but for stores, hotels, apartment houses, low 

commercial buildings, and residences the design was entirely suitable once a dependable central electricity 

supply had become avaUable and the details of control been improved. The basic arrangement—the motor driving 

the drum through worm gearing—remains in wide use for installations in which the final form of the electric 

elevator—the gearless traction system—^is not called for. (From The Electrical World, 2 January 1897:xcvii.) 
30 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

Wheelers between these factors and the equivalencies of 

electicity, whose mysteries were due mainly to the fact that it 

was as intangible as water was palpable. Even illuminating 

gas, diough invisible, was a fully detectable substance of 

long-standing common experience. Electricity, on the other 

hand, worked its wonders without benefit of pipes or other 

orthodox means of conveyance. It was ethereal. Moreover, it 

was anything but benign, for its tendency to arc violently and 

sputter menacingly, and its capacity for causing not only fire, 

but pain, injury, and even deadi were early and popularly 

recognized. It is easy to picture the feelings of die Wheelers if 

asked to consider the introduction into their house of this 

sinister element on what, in comparison to a few lighting 

circuits, would have been a massive scale. 

But even if all of die above factors were disregarded, there 

remained one other that alone should well have been more than 

enough to remove electricity entirely from the running. That 

was the matter of reliability. Central electricity supply at the 

time was anything but dependable. Both generating and 

distribution systems were composed of numerous weakest 

links. Failures of service were frequent. Recall that until about 

the end of the century's first decade most incandescent lighting 

fixtures were of die combination type, incorporating gas jets 

equal in number to the bulb sockets so diat in die event of 

electricity failure with only a momentary lapse light could be 

restored. 

But if a collapse of the electric lighting system could be 

immediately side-stepped with only slight inconvenience, 

what of an electric elevator? Widi no possibility of falling back 

on gas (or anything else) a car stopped dead between floors 

due to power fadure was a perfecdy reasonable expectation. If 

the outage were protracted—as often they were—die consequences could be grim in die contemplation. In contrast, the 

supply of water in the mains was virtually foolproof, depending 

as it did on natural gravity flow from an elevated reservoir. 

We may visualize, then, the decision being taken without a 

great deal of pondering on die part of the elderly and doubtless 

conservative Wheelers to adopt die tried and true, the utterly 

certain, the absolutely safe and easily controllable. 

Elias Brewer, Elevator Builder 

For reasons that wdl become clear, I have come to view 

Brewer not as an elevator manufacturer, but a builder. The 

more his work is examined die more it appears that he did less 

designing of equipment dian of installations, and less 

manufacturing of machinery than specifying it, to be made by 

others—with the real possibility that he did no machine work 

at all. 

Elias Brewer's professional career is obscure, the trail 

marked by no original paper and litUe enough secondary. He 

was born in Lachine, Quebec (near Mond-eal), on 24 December 

1839, apparendy moved to New York State, and is not again 

fixed in time or place untd his initial appearance in die Boston 

city directory in 1874, listed as a carpenter. Although we will 

look at the few additional shreds of available information 

elucidating Brewer's work, these city directories may be taken 

as a fairly graphic indicator of his involvement in the elevator 

business. There is a starding jump in Boston's elevator industry 

about die year 1877, for whereas the 1874 directory lists 11 

elevator firms and the 1876 directory 12, the volume for 1877 

identifies 21, among whom, for the first time, is found "Brewer 

& Co." The directory dirough 1880 carried only die single 

classification "Elevators," but starting in 1881 subdivided the 

business into "Elevator Manufacturers" and "Elevators and 

Elevator Fixtures." The latter classification, which ought to 

have been the clear territory of installers and makers of such 

accessory products as safety devices and shaft gates, was in 

fact an indistinct one, for many of the large fu-ms that clearly 

were manufacturers of elevator machinery and are so shown, 

appear also in die second group. Of pertinence here, though, 

is that Brewer invariably is listed only in the Elevators and 

Elevator Fixtures category. Nonetheless, equally invariably he 

styles himself as a "manufacturer" in all advertisements up to 

die year 1905. 

I have found no clue as to the scale or scope of Brewer's 

activities in Boston's vigorous vertical-transportation community at this time of his jumping in, but that he aspired to be 

something more dian a mere trooper is seen by his having 

obtained a patent on 10 Aprd 1877, for an "Improvement in 

Hydraulic Elevators" (Figure 25). This is a curious device, 

embracing a minor mechanical modification of the conventional vertical-cylinder, rope-geared hydraulic. The patent 

specification is, in fact, uncharacteristically nebulous. The 

principal claim made by Brewer is the mechanical symmetry 

achieved by the arrangement of two power cylinders and two 

sets of rope sheaves, all working in conjunction with a common 

crosshead. The advantage claimed for this scheme was "very 

steady movement of the car" and security against the cables 

becoming unreeved in the event of the car becoming 

momentarily blocked during descent. It is difficult to see how 

either of these aims would be any better met than in a 

conventional system with appropriate guards for the ropes 

where they passed over the sheaves. But there is an even odder 

component to the patent In Figure 25, the central cylinder (y) 

will be seen to be connected directly to the mains water supply 

line at (t), before the distribution or operating valve. The 

purpose of this feature was to act as a counterbalance—in 

place, presumably, of the conventional suspended counterweight used to balance die dead weight of the car. In Brewer's 

patent this was to be accomplished by the pressure of the 

supply water acting constantiy on the central piston. When the 

car descended, die water in the cylinder simply would be forced 

back into die main; a plan noble in its simplicity, to be sure, 

eliminating the counterweight and its outfit of guide rails, 

overhead sheave, and ropes. But, strangely, the very same 

scheme had been patented by one Timothy Stebins (who, 

incidentally, also was a resident of Boston), a mere five mondis 
NUMBER 50 31 

No. 189,424, 

E. BREWER. 

H7DRAULIC ELEVATOR. 

Patented April 10, 1877. 

G S S B 5 1 n V e nx n K: 

X ^ p^y (C/t'^-^'fr^ j-^'-Zr-tq crty , 

FIGURE 25.—^The drawing accompanying EUas Brewer's (apparently) sole patent of 10 April 1877. Although 

the patent's claims of originahty differed somewhat from those of Timothy Stebins's only sUghtly earlier patent, 

it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Brewer was strongly influenced by the prior work of his fellow 

Bostonian. A principal Brewer claim was counterbalancing of the elevator's dead weight by constant application 

to the piston in the central cylinder (y) of pressurized water from the supply main—through pipe (a) which was 

connected to the main ahead of the control valve (u). When the car descended (by gravity), the water in the 

balance cylinder simply was forced back into the main. 
32 

No. 181,113. 

2 Sheets—Sheet 1. 

T. STEBINS. 

HTDRAULIC ELEVATOR. 

Patented Aug. 15. 1876. 

^W- JNo. 181^ll 

SMITHSONTAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

2 Sheets—Sheet 2. 

T. STEBINS. 

HYDRAULIC ELEVATOR. 

Patented Au2.^15, 1876 

1 

\ 

ll 

1 

1 

1 

J- i 

1 

1 i|! 

j 1 

yyitnesses' Xnye^ztor: 

FYUneSses • Jny e.y/tor: 

RGURE 26.—The drawings of Timothy Stebins's hydraulic elevator patent of 15 August 1876, the apparent 

inspiration for Brewer's patented design. Stebins employed a central balance cylinder and an annular power 

cyUnder. 

before Brewer's patent application on 10 January 1877 (Figure 

26). Clearly we have here a case of somediing other than eerie 

coincidence, and we should love to know something of the 

Brewer-Stebins relationship, for certain it is that they were 

known to one another. Timothy Stebins is listed in the 

directories through the mid-1870s as, simply, "foreman," widi 

no affihation. Then in 1879 he appears as "Supt. Hydrauhc 

Elevator, S. Boston Iron Co." That firm was one of the city's 

large machine works, advertising as a specialty "Hydraulic 

Passenger and Freight Elevators Of Improved Design, by 

which die greatest possible economy in the use of water is 

effected." 

As Stebins's patents were not assigned direcdy to South 

Boston Iron, is it possible that he was allowed to do a certain 

amount of freelancing and had some sort of association widi 

Brewer? Or were diey merely friendly rivals? Or were they 

bitter competitors?^ Whatever the relative position of die two 

men widi regard to their patents, that between the two patents 

is distinctiy peculiar. In Brewer's initial application he 

explicidy claimed the use of the central piston and cylinder as 

a counterbalancing device. That claim, and the elongated 

crosshead widi paired sheaves, initially were disallowed by the 

patent examiner as being covered by prior patents, of J.L. Clark 

and J. Standfield, and Stebins, respectively.^^ In this maze of 
NUMBER 50 33 

curiosities, the examiner did not identify Stebins's use of the 

counterbalancing central cyhnder. By a linguistic fiddle, his 

attorney was able to so adjust Brewer's claims as apparendy 

to satisfy die examiner, leaving the patent to be issued in the 

following baffling form. In the body of the specification 

Brewer does "not claim the use of two cylinders, one lifting 

at each end of die cross-head, nor...the use of a carcounterbalancing cylinder containing water in connection with 

an elevator...," whde in the summary of claims at the end of 

the specification he does claim the combination of the other 

elements of the device "with a central car-counterbalancing 

cylinder and piston...." It would seem that the patent finally 

was allowed on the basis of claiming a combination of the 

group of components, despite seeming to be in violation of the 

examiner's admonition that he would not allow the patent if it 

were "a mere aggregation" of previously patented details. 

Whether Brewer and his attorney obtained a patent on a truly 

novel device or simply outran the examiner, an uncharitable 

eye might see in the patent die product of a man desperately 

anxious to make a visible splash in a new field in which he 

was attempting to gain a foodiold. 

There is no way to know whether Brewer actually budt and 

installed any elevators based on his patent, although it is likely 

that he tried at least a few as a matter of pride (if not forestalled 

as an infringer by Stebins). But, to be sure, die patent did play 

a passive role in the next stage of his career. This was the 

placement in 1883 of his first advertisement in the city 

directory (diere may have been earlier ones in other media). 

The ad (Figure 27) depicts an elevator machine clearly 

patterned after the patent, but with the notable absence of the 

central balance cylinder. The car is balanced by a traditional 

counterweight, the overhead sheave of which is seen in the 

cut. The ad copy ambiguously observes that what is illustrated 

is a "two-cyUnder Hydraulic Machine with freight car in 

operation," going on to note that it has 30 percent less friction 

than any odier in Boston and consumes 30 percent less water 

than any other elevator in operation (a response to the South 

Boston Iron Co. claim?). These assertions are patentiy absurd, 

for unless Brewer was constructing his sheaves with ball or 

roller anti-friction bearings—^totally unlikely—two cylinders 

radier than one would only add rubbing surface area to the 

machine and raise, not reduce, the system's internal friction. 

As to water saving, if die supply was drawn from die main and 

discharged to die sewer, a given trip widi a machine of a given 

lifting capacity would consume a given volume of water 

regardless of the load and the machine's configuration. 

Hyperbole aside, Brewer does seem to have made modest 

progress in the elevator business. He continued to run large, 

illustrated ads in die city directory, but by 1886 had dropped 

the cut of his proprietary machine and was showing only a 

conventional hand-powered platform elevator of insignificant 

proportions—a trivial-seeming representative of a firm diat 

billed itself as able to furnish hydraulic, steam, and beltpowered (and hand) elevators, for hotels, office buildings, and 

warehouses, as well as for private residences. It was, incidenUy, 

by 1886 diat the ad prominenUy featured die "private 

residences and invalid elevators" notice that had first drawn 

my attention to Brewer. 

The extent of Brewer's custom by this time is unknown. 

He still operated from the address (267 Federal Street) shown 

in his initial 1877 listing, but his ad in the 1888 directory 

introduces a distinct signal of expansion: a branch office at 135 

Spring Street, New York. Obviously diis was just that—an 

office—and quite likely signified no more dian an agent who 

handled a stable of industrial accounts. This alHance appears 

to have been short-lived for the New York reference is gone 

from the ads by 1891, about which time Brewer also had moved 

the firm to 52 Sudbury Street. An anomaly is a small ad in an 

1895 vanity pubhcation on the city's budding trades, to 

illustrate which the old cut of die double-cylinder hydraulic 

machine was dug out. 

The only discovered hint as to the scale of the business is a 

short account in that same volume, describing Mr. Brewer as 

a man who has kept ahead of the times (with 18-year-old 

hydraulic machines of questionable merit?), and who has 

"inu^oduced his elevators into about one hundred hotels and 

private residences in Boston and about fifty similar buddings 

in New York City.. .his trade [extending].. .also into Canada."^^ 

A number of die Boston hotels are listed, as well as a theater 

and two office buildings. The account is also of interest in 

observing diat die "elevators are all made under patents of Mr. 

Brewer's inventions, and his safety devices which are also 

patented, are peculiarly valuable." Unless Brewer held some 

Canadian (or other foreign) patents, this statement is an 

exaggeration, for a careful review of the U.S. patent records 

has failed to reveal any other Brewer patents. 

But if diis essay and the ad are to be believed. Brewer was, 

in fact, keeping, if not ahead of, at least up with the times as 

here for the first time he drops mention of steam elevators, and 

joins the van by stating that he can furnish electrics. 

The attempt to assess the extent of Brewer's operations again 

raises die question of his being an actual manufacturer. His 

consistent directory listing under "Elevators and Elevator 

Fixtures" radier than "Manufacturers" would seem conclusive 

evidence that he actually buUt few or none of the components 

of his installations. This is supported by the fact that at none 

of the four premises Brewer is shown to have occupied between 

his start in 1877 and retirement about 1912 is he seen to be die 

sole occupant^ AU of die immediate neighborhoods were 

occupied at that time by small loft and manufacturing buddings 

of up to five stories, few of them occupied by a single tenant. 

It would appear diat at each of these locations Brewer operated 

from just a floor or two. There is nodiing from which to draw 

even a sketchy picture of his plant, but we can speculate on a 

range of possibilities on the basis of die Wheeler elevator. At 

the minimal end of the scale would be an absolutely bare-bones 

operation, with Brewer himself and perhaps a draftsman 

designing each installation—which of course included new 
34 SMFTHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

E. B»ETVEIt, 

MANUFACTUIIKR OF 

Hytalic Elevators ni Mi Elevators 

Xo. 1. 

E:. BREWER. 

FOll 

HOTKLS, STORES, PKIA ATK 

KESIDKNCES and OFFICE 

BUILDINGS. 

No. 1 cut represents a two-cylinder 

Hydraulic ^Machine \\ itli freijjjht car 

in o])erntioH. Jt has ;>() per cent, less 

friction than any other in Boston, 

and it consumes M) jier cent, less 

water than any otli'V Klevator in 

operation. It is multiplied ten fold, 

with a set of sheave.*^: the piston ascending one foot causes the car to 

rise ten feet. 

No. 2 cut represents a Hand Elevator, with automatic brake, the latest 

improvement, Avhich will hold the 

load in any position from descending, 

ami yet it does not interfere with 

the ascension of the Klevator. 

dgg^ For further information address 

No. 2. 

- 26 7 FEOERiiL L STREET , BOSTON -

S E N J» FO R 4;iK<:UI . AK . 

FIGURE 27.—Brewer's first adverdsement in the Boston city directory, 1883, featuring his patented hydraulic 

elevator machine. Curiously, however, he had dropped the hydraulic counterbalancing feature in favor of a 

conventional counterweight as shown here. Perhaps Stebins had felt himself infringed upon and had persuaded 

Brewer to revert to counterbalancing orthodoxy. 

buildings as well as insertions in old. In a city (and region) as 

industrially rich and diverse as Boston it would have been 

easily possible to have every detad of an elevator jobbed out: 

pattern and foundry work for the cylinders, operating valves, 

and other castings; all machine work for these; and, of course, 

the cabinet work of the cars. Many of the fittings such as large 

and small sheaves, hoisting and control rope, and all plumbing 

would have been avaUable direcdy off the shelf from any 

number of mill and industrial supply houses. 

A certain amount of fitting and assembling could have been 

done in his own shop and the lot of parts carried to die job site 

where the major assembly would have had to be done in any 

case. At the other end of the scale, it would have been entirely 

possible for Brewer to have had a modest amount of metal-and 

wood-working machinery at his loft premises, enabling him 

to do the lighter machine work, all die wood pattern work, and 

the cabinetry of the cars. Arguing in favor of limited facUities, 

however, is the undoubted irregularity of elevator work, 

particularly in the case of a relatively small operator like 

Brewer, so that if he were half a business man he would have 

recognized the advantage of maintaining litde or no plant of 

his own, farming out die bulk, or aU, of his manufacturing 

work as jobs came his way. The same may be surmised about 

his field crews: that he picked them up and laid diem off as the 
NUMBER 50 35 

work demanded. 

A final, indirect, clue to the generally modest level of 

Brewer's business may be taken from his Ufe style, in turn 

implied by his residences. For most of his professional life in 

Boston he resided in Chelsea, an unpretentious near suburb, 

in a frame house (still standing) diat could be described only 

as humble. Upon retirement he moved to Onset, an equally 

unimposing seaside community at the base of Cape Cod. That 

house now is gone, but on the assumption that it was on the 

order of its surviving near neighbors, it, too, was anything but 

grand. 

EUas Brewer died (of sendity) in February 1918, at the age 

of 78. He was hailed in local obituaries as the "inventor of die 

Brewer elevator," and eulogized in one as "a prominent 

manufacturer of elevators and...die dean of diis business in 

Boston." The firm continued under his two sons untd just 

before World War II, when it disappears from die directories. 

A fmal, minor question remains concerning die WheelerBrewer elevator: how was die connection made between the 

two parties? In view of the number of residential hydraulics 

already installed in the Back Bay by the time the Wheelers had 

made their decision to go elevator, and the likelihood that a 

number of them were by Brewer, simple word-of-mouth 

reference may well have been die means. Otherwise, we may 

assume that it was Brewer's highly focused ads in the city 

directory—in 1902 essentially filling the role of today's 

telephone directory as a means of access to fellow residents 

and businesses—that drew the Wheelers' attention to his work. 

The elevator was invented in America, which also produced 

the aeroplane, the telphone and other time-savers and it has 

enabled man to colonize the air. Half a century ago nobody 

lived more than seventy feet above the ground. Now-a-days 

men do business happily 500 feet aloft, and discharge their 

office boys for stealing eagles' eggs off the fire escapes instead 

of attending to business. MA. O'Brien. Jr., 1915?^ 
36 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

*']Ve hesitated a long time he fore installing a lift^ but fortunately ifs Period ... " 

FIGURE 28.—(By Rowland Emett, reproduced from Punch, ca. 1950, by kind permission.) 
Appendix 

A Chronology of Elias Brewer 

(From Boston city directories and obituaries in the Waretiam Courier, 14 Feb 1918, the Chelsea Gazette, 16 Feb 

1918, and the Chelsea Evening Record, 18 Feb 1918.) 

1839 (24 Dec) Born, in Lachine, P.Q., Canada, of 

Canadian parents. 

1874 First entry in Boston city directory, listed as 

"carpenter"; residence at 36 Lawrence St. 

1877 First directory enuy as elevator builder: BREWER 

&c CO., 267 Federal St. (residence at 54 Ellery 

St.) (Does "&c CO." imply a partner?) 

1877 (10 April) Issued first, and apparendy only, U.S. 

patent, for a hydraulic elevator: No. 189,424. 

1879 Directory entry for BREWER & CO. at bodi 267 

Federal St. and 158 Sumner St. 

1880 BREWER & CO. now shown only at 267 Federal 

St.; residence at 267 E. 8th St. (Typo?) 

1881 Directory entry now for ELIAS BREWER, elevator manufacturer. (A split from a partner?) 

1883 First advertisement in die directory: E. BREWER, 

MANUFACTURER OF HAND AND HYDRAULIC ELEVATORS. 

1886 Same as above, but ad now shows 267 Federal St. 

and 149 Broadway, New York, the latter 

presumably only an agency office. 

1888 Same ad, but NY office now at 135 Spring St. 

1891 E. BREWER'S Boston premises now at 52 

Sudbury St.; no mention of NY office. 

1893 ELIAS BREWER, at 52 Sudbury St. 

1895 ELIAS BREWER & CO. (diis same ad, unchanged, to 1908). (Parmer again?) 

1902 Installation of small hydraulic passenger elevator 

for Alexander Wheeler, at 72 Marlborough 

Street, Back Bay. 

1908 Address of fu-m now 19 Bowker St., with (son) 

John E. Brewer listed as clerk. 

1909 Same listing as above, plus (son) Elias H. Brewer 

as mechanic. 

1911 Firm now at 27 Bowker St. 

1912 Shown now as BREWER ELEVATOR CO., INC., 

SUCCESSORS TO ELIAS BREWER & CO.; 

EUas Brewer, President; the sons stiU shown as 

clerk and mechanic. 

1915 Same listing except diat Brewer now residing at 

the seaside village of Onset, presumably in 

retirement (age 75 years). 

1918 (13 Feb) Elias Brewer dies (of senUity), age 78 

yrs, 1 month, 19 days. No autopsy; interment 

at Long Neck Cemetery, Wareham. Haded in 

obituaries as "Inventor of the Brewer Elevator" 

and "Dean of the elevator business in Boston." 

Surviving children: John E. of Maiden; Elias 

H. of Revere; Amy; Mrs. LiUian Mclsaac of 

Jamaica Plain; Mrs. Ella Van Patten of Chelsea; 

Mrs. Alice Macdonald. 

1938 BREWER ELEVATOR CO. shown at 47 Bowker 

St., widi John E. and Elias H. 

1939 Firm shown at 14 Chardon St.. widi Paul E. only, 

residence at Maiden. (Son of John E.?) 

1940 No listing for Brewer Elevator Co; no individual 

listing for either John E. or Elias H. Paul E. still 

residing at Maiden. The apparent end of the 

business. 

37 
Notes 

1. The NMAH collections contain a modest ntimber of elevator 

artifacts. The crown jewels of these holdings are an Otis doublecylinder steam elevator machine of ca. 1873 that powered the ballroom 

elevator of the celebrated Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, 

N.Y., and an Otis freight platform of the late 19th century, fitted with 

E.G. Otis's broken-rope safety stop of the original, classical 

"wagon-spring" type (see note 8). Both were donated to the Museum 

by the Otis company and at the time of writing are on display in the 

exhibition 1876. 

2. A small handful of horizontal-cylinder, rope-geared hydraulic 

elevators do survive in situ, both in service and more or less 

deliberately preserved on the strength of their historical value. Of 

those few in passenger service, all are in low buildings of, at the most, 

fotir or five stories, and thus caimot be viewed as truly representing 

the class in its role as the enabler of the tall building. Ftirthermore, 

none of these examples, even those "preserved," can be regarded as 

absolutely secure against future removal. The Smiths Clove Museum 

near Monroe, New York, has collected the machinery of one of these 

elevators but apparendy not the car or the control gear. In the holdings 

of the Lifteiunuseum near Amsterdam—one of two elevator museums 

in the world—is a rope-geared hydraulic freight elevator but with a 

configuration of elements rather different from the American pattem. 

3. Nancy Ritchie-Noakes, Liverpool's Historic Waterfront: the 

World's First Mercantile Dock System (London: Her Majesty's 

Stationery Office, 1984), page 121. 

4. Nancy Richie-Noakes, Jesse Hartley: Dock Engineer to the 

Port of Liverpool, 1824-60 (Liverpool: Merseyside County Museums, 

1980), page 58. 

5. A transiuonal type between the rope-geared hydraulic and the 

electric traction elevator was the "direct-plunger" system, a collateral 

derivative of Bramah's hydraulic press. Funtionally it was. in fact, 

an even closer relative of the fundamental press than Bramah's own 

rack-and-pinion crane, for the elevator car was carried directly on the 

ram or plunger (piston) of the hydraulic cylinder, exacUy like the 

platen of a press. The system's inherent simplicity was appealing, and 

by the 1860s inventors in all parts of the world were attempting to 

embrace the notion of an elevator with but a single moving part. The 

apparent great advantage of the type compared to the rope-geared 

hydraulic and the other suspended systems in addition to its 

simplicity—no ropes or sheaves in installations of low rise—^was its 

fuUy evident safety: the car always was borne upon a column of water 

that, if by system failure were to escape from the cylinder, could do 

so only slowly, allowing the car to descend hardly faster than normally 

(Figure 22). A disadvantage was that in installation a bore hole to 

accommodate the cylinder had to be sunk beneath the elevator shaft 

equal in depth to the elevator's rise. 

With the advance of well-drilling techniques by the end of the 

cenmry, the problem of sinkitig even very long cylinders was 

essentially resolved. Direct-plunger hydraulics enjoyed a considerable 

use between about 1890 and 1920, built by two or three major fams. 

Employing nearly the same water-supply and control technologies as 

the large rope-geared systems, they were installed in some 

astonishingly tall buildings—^up to 25 stories—largely in New York. 

When these systems are described for the first time to the mechanically 

oriented the question immediately is raised: what in the world prevents 

the buckling of a relatively thin plunger as much as 250 feet long, 

bearing at its upper end a loaded elevator car? In fact, in the highest 

rise direct-plunger installations, with the car in the upper reaches of 

its travel, the fully extended pltmger could be seen to sway laterally 

several inches back and forth, a mildly uimerving effect. Why didn't 

the plunger, never more than eight inches in diameter, simply collapse 

like so much spaghetti under the weight of the car? The answer lay 

in the counterweight system always applied to those systems of more 

than five or six floors rise. When the car was at the top, the weight 

of the counterweight ropes, on the other side of the sheaves at the top 

of the shaftway, balanced the weight of the unsupported plunger so 

that for most of its length the plunger actually hung from the car and 

was in tension rather than compression. Hence the alarming but 

harmless swaying. As the car descended, the counterweight-rope 

weight gradually was transferred to the car-side of the sheaves and 

so balanced less and less of the plunger's weight. But simultaneously 

the plunger was retracting into its cylinder so that there was a steadily 

lessening length of unsupported column. The length of unsupported 

plunger in compression actually never extended very far above the top 

of the cylinder. As the car descended, a second effect took place: with 

more and more of the heavy counterweight ropes passing from the 

counterweight-side to the car-side of the overhead sheaves, the 

counterbalancing of the car was increasingly diminished. But at the 

same time more and more of the plunger's weight was being buoyed 

by the water in the cylinder,* reducing the car's virtual weight. Thus, 

the system's dead load was in nearly perfect balance regardless of the 

car's position. 

*The plunger in a direct-plunger elevator was just that: a 

constant-diameter plunger passing through a stuffing box at the top 

of the cylinder and of somewhat less diameter than the cylinder 

bore—^not a close-fitting piston. The effect of this was that when in 

the cylinder the hollow pltmger was surrotinded by water and thus 

buoyed in direct proportion to its retracted length. 

6. An account of this elevator, certainly among the earliest for 

passengers in the Uruted States, is fovind in a typescript from an 

tinidentified source among the "papers of the Late Prof. Frank J. Roos, 

Jr." in the files of the Historic American Buildings Survey (National 

Park Service). The description, taken from "A Journal of a Voyage 

to New England Performed in the Year 1844, by S.S. Walker," reads, 

"[the Monument] is kept by a man who for a quarter will take you to 

the top in a steam car, or for a shilling you may have the privilege of 

walking up a never ending spiral staircase. The ascent by the car is 

pleasant. You step into a bird cage big enough for 6 persons to stand 

at once, and in 3 minutes you open the door of the cage and walk out 

upon a floor where you may look out... ."I am not aware of any further 

description of this device nor of any illustrations of it. It probably was 

similar to a mine hoist, controlled from the machine itself at the 

38 
NUMBER 50 39 

bottom. 

7. "The Vertical Railway," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 

(November. 1882). pages 888-894. 

8. E.G. Otis, commonly believed to have "invented the elevator." 

in fact was the inventor of the first practical safety device. It was of 

the "broken-rope" tyjje, that arrested the car in the hoistway if, for any 

reason, the tension on the hoisting rope(s) was relaxed, in the event 

of rope breakage or failure of some other part of the hoisting 

mechanism. It was this elegantiy simple device that largely was 

responsible for wirming public confidence in the passenger elevator. 

There can be little doubt that Otis's sp>ectacular and now legendary 

demonstration of his safety apparatus at the 1854 Crystal Palace 

exposition in New York was as instrumental as its own merits in both 

inspiring that confidence and fixing it in the popular mind. 

9. "The Vertical Railway" (note 7). 

10. John Albury Bryan, Because of Iron: A Series of Brochures 

Dealing with the Use of Iron in our Modern Civilization (published 

by the author, 1947). An interesting, brief history of the elevator, 

containing considerable obscure information gathered from a variety 

of sotirces. His cited patent statistics were obtained, presumably, from 

the Patent Office's figtires for that classification. 

11. Charles S. Damrell, A Half Century of Boston's Building 

(Boston: Louis P. Hager, 1895), pages 43ff. 

12. All Back Bay structures, being on made groimd, of necessity 

were built on pilings. In row houses the party, end, front, and rear 

walls, all of masonry, were thus piled. The pilings, of timber, had to 

be kept entirely below the water table to prevent their rotting. TTie 

interrelationship among the elevations of the water table, pile caps, 

granite footing blocks that bore on the piles, street, and house floors 

dictated the arrangement described. The Donelan house crawl space 

is about four feet in clear height, partially flagged with rough slates, 

and is tised to pass all the hotise's supply and waste plumbing. The 

vertical relationship of the typical Back Bay row house to the 

topography is clearly described and illustrated by sectional drawings 

in Bainbridge Bunting's classic Houses of Boston's Back Bay: An 

Architectural History, 1840-1917 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 

University Press, 1967), pages 272-276. 

13. The Historic American Engineering Record is a bureau of the 

National Park Service, charged with preparing graphic and verbal 

documentation of American engineering and industrial structures 

judged to be of historical importance. The drawings, photographs, and 

historical data generated by HAER projects—which can range in scale 

from a half-day photographic sortie such as that at the Donelan house 

to a summer-long survey of a major industrial site involving a dozen 

draftsmen, photographers, and historians—are deposited in and their 

distribution administered by the Division of Prints and Photographs, 

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540. A Ust of the HAER 

holdings from its start in 1969 up to 1985 is available from HAER, 

Box 37127, Washington, D.C. 20013-7127. 

14. A full report on the removal process and its architecturalarcheological revelations is in the files of the Division of Engineering 

and Industry, Room 5020, NMAH, Washington, D.C. 20560. 

15. This points out once again the risk in attributing dates to things 

on the basis of their "typicaUty" or "suggestiveness" of a certain 

period. What so often is overlooked by historians in tising this method 

is the "Factor of Temporal Inertia." This is, simply, that phenomenon 

whereby more craftsmen, builders, manufacturers, and others who 

produce things will tend to continue making what they know, than 

will innovate or change their product. Brewer seems to have been an 

exponent of this practice, for the Wheeler elevator—even to the style 

of the car—^would have been entirely at home in a setting of the 

mid-1880s if not even somewhat earlier. It would be interesting to 

compare this installation with others of his—^both earlier and 

later—but, alas, none are known. 

16. Btmting (note 12). page 283. 

17. The first electric passenger elevator in the Uiuted States was 

installed in Baltimore, by WdUam Baxter, in 1887. 

18. James V. Toner, The Boston Edison Story, 1886-1951, 65 

Years of Service! (New York: The Newcomen Society in North 

America, 1951). 

19. Electrical World (October 2, 1886), page 168. 

20. Annual reports of the Inspector of Buildings, Boston, various 

years. 

21. History of the Boston Water Works from 1868 to 1876 (Boston: 

Rockwell & Churchill, 1876), page 43. The metering of elevator water 

was carried out as noted. The Wheeler House elevator was fitted with 

a register, cobbled up, oddly, from the clockwork register mechanism 

of a gas meter (Figure 13). Whether this was the convention or whether 

commercially manufacturered versions were available is not known. 

It was connected by string or wire (missing) to some part of the 

power-cylinder crosshead so as to register total piston/car travel. 

Multiplication of this figure by a conversion constant would give 

water consumption in gallons. Apparently the honor system prevailed 

for the register was neither enclosed nor sealed in any way. 

22. Bunting (note 12), page 280. 

23. Marie Garden, "Historic American Btiildings Survey, 72 

Marlborough Street, Boston, MA" (Boston: Boston University, spring, 

1985), unpublished report for course AM 780: Problems in Historic 

Preservation, page 2. 

24. Other than placing him at South Boston Iron Co., I have made 

no attempt to identify Stebins. His career certainly revolved arotind 

elevators, however, for he was issued at least four patents in the field. 

The first of which I am aware he obtained in 1873 while a resident 

of San Francisco. It was for a horizontal-cylinder "pulling-type" 

hydratilic in which the piston rod was dispensed witii and the hoisting 

rope was attached direcUy to the piston, passing through a stuffmg 

box in the cylinder head. There was no rope multiplication and the 

claimed object was to save the length normally required by the nm 

of the rigid piston. Although the scheme appears dubious, such 

systems did fmd some commercial use. In December 1875 Stebins (by 

then in Boston) received a patent for a hydraulic elevator having the 

wildly imorthodox feature of an integral water turbine geared to a 

winding drum. In February, 1876 he was issued a patent for a 

"symmetrical" or "concentric" hydratilic having several co-axial 

cylinders working on a common crosshead, the apparent inspiration 

for his August patent and, thus by imputation. Brewer's. 

25. Invention Patent Apphcation File for Brewer's patent, issued 

as No. 189,424 on 10 April 1877. (Invention Patent as opposed to 

Design Patent.) These files, for all patents issued between 1836 and 

1918, are at the National Archives and Record Service (Suitiand, 

Maryland, repository). Each file contains the uiitial application and 

any subsequent correspondence between the examiner and the inventor 

(or his attomey) concerning prior art, anticipated rejections, rebuttals, 

and other matters concerning the invention's patentabiUty. Clark and 

Standfield were Londoners, entirely fitting inasmuch as the field of 

hydrostatic engineering played a dramatically greater role in Britain's 
40 SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 

technology than that of any odier nation. (N.B. the account earlier in 

this article of English hydraulic cranage as hydraulic elevator 

prehistory.) Their extensive patent—^No. 181,409 of 22 August 

1876—covered a wide range of hydraulic lifting devices, most of them 

involving the balancing of a movable structure's dead weight by 

means of hydraulic pressure, provided in all cases by dead-weight 

accumulators radier than by mains pressure. 

26. Damrell (note 11), pages 470-471; advertisement, page 117. 

27. Sanborn Map Co., Atlas Of Boston (New York, various years). 

A large collection of these is in the Geography and Map Division, 

Library of Congress. 

28. M.A. O'Brien, Jr., A Treatise on the Elevator Industry 

(Chicago: pubUsher unknovsTi, 1915). 
References 

(not cited in text) 

Baxter, William, Jr. 

1910. Hydraulic Elevators: Their Design, Construction, Operation, Care 

and Management. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 

Bethmann, H. 

1913. Der Aufzugbau: ein Handbuch fiir das Constructionsbureau. 

Braunschweig [publisher unknown]. 

The Boston Directory... a General Directory of the Citizens, and Business 

Directory. Boston: Sampson, Davenport & Co., various years. 

Brown, Thcsnas E. 

1905. Passenger Elevators. Transactions of the American Society of Civil 

Engineers, LN, 1905:133-205. [Paper no. 22. delivered at the 

International Engineering Congress, SL Louis, 1904, followed by 

discussion.] 

Byrne, Oliver, and Emest Spon, editors 

1874. [Article on varieties of hydrauhc machines.] Spons' Dictionary of 

Engineering, Division VI. London: E. & F.N. Spon. 

Jallings John H. 

1916. Elevators: A Practical Treatise on the Development and Design of 

Hand, Belt, Steam, Hydraulic, and Electric Elevators. Chicago: 

American Technical Society. 

Kloraan, Charles H. 

1907. The Growth and Development of the Elevator Industry. Cassiers, 

32:389-404. 

Leading Manufacturers and Merchants of the City of Boston. Boston: 

IntemaUonal Publishing Co., 1885. 

McNeil, Ian 

1968. Joseph Bramah: A Century of Invention, 1749-1851. New York: 

Augustus M. Kelly Publishers. 

Shaw, A.C. 

1892. The New Station of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of 

Boston. The Electrical Engineer, 10 August 1892, pages 119ff. 

A Textbook On Steam Engineering. Volume 1, Pumps, Elevators, Steam 

Heating. Scranton: IntemaUonal Textbook Co., 1902. 

Vogel, Robert M. 

1961. The Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower, 1889. Contributions from 

the Museum of History & Technology, 19:1-40. Washington, D.C: 

Smithscwiian Institution. 

41 



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