Almost all New York has to press a button and often wait a while for their automated lift to arrive.
In the meantime, Tony Scallia spends the days in a crunchy gray uniform, pulling an accordion door and manually carries the riders up and down in one of the last lifts that are in hand of Manhattan.
The cabin is leveled with the accuracy of a surgeon, nods the first tenant of the day and begins a change that feels more like a ritual than a routine.
At Calle 863 Park Ave Co-OP, near 77th Street, where Sialia, 44, has worked for a quarter of a century, the progress moves slower, and is exactly how residents like it.
“It is good to know that I have a rare job,” he told The Post. “There is this saying: someone could do my job. But there is only one. And that’s how to look.”
Manual elevator operators were once the life life of vertical life in New York City.
In the mid -twentieth century, the census had more than 90,000 lifts operators across the country. But after the 1945 city elevator strike, when 15,000 operators ended technological innovation and changing attitudes, they accelerated their fall.
Today, the paper is all extinct.
The city’s building department estimates that there are only about 50 hand lifts in Manhattan, including a few in Brooklyn, mainly in older cooperatives and historic hotels. In an age of automation, a human behind the wheel is charming anachronism.
“We have no computer systems. Only we,” he said.
Scallia’s workplace is generally a charming remnant of ancient New York. The 1908 building, designed by Pollard & Steinam with a restricted Beaux-Arts style, has limestone details and 23 units. Currently it also has a house for sale, one of three bedrooms with ceilings and a refurbished kitchen calling for $ 2.5 million, represented by compass, not to speak historically of little turnover.
“It’s a very nice feeling. That feeling of the old world,” Siallia said. “It’s a different time for them. They come from this time. They are very primary and appropriate,” he said about the owners who call the building in their homes, many of whom have done it for more than half a century.
Bronx, Sciallia, was a student at Suny Westchester Community College when he landed for the summer work.
“A friend of mine recommended me … So I could make additional money on the side. And it was perfect. I fit well.”
Decades later, he still takes the train from five in the morning of Cortlandt Manor to Westchester, stops in Dunkin ‘Donuts for his habitual – hot coffee, light cream and sugar – and transforms to the concierge.
It is only the fourth person to operate this elevator in more than a century. “The guy I took your place [from] It was 35 years. And the boy was there before for 35 or 36 years, so he began in the 1950’s, “said Siallia.
At 7:20 AM, the cooperative’s lobby mocks with dog walkers, schoolchildren and residents who go to the office. And there is only one man to carry them.
“I’m the first at the morning door,” he said. “We do all the dry clean, the collections, the abandonments we bring to the upstairs, we make the mail. We carry all the hats.”
The elevator itself is a relic of another age: with wooden panels, with brass and manually operated by a rotating lever. Requires fineness.
“You have to level yourself,” Siallia said. “There is a trick. The elevator does everything you want to do. This is the trick. So if you are playing there, wrapping it, the elevator will be wrapped.”
When Sciallia recently began to train newcomers (believe –
“You don’t want the elevator to continue to rise and down. Three shots, you’re fine,” he added.
Over the years, Sialia has seen more than many see throughout their lives: turns, the appearance of the technology that causes online order plots to reach massive amounts, as well as celebrity observations. Brooke Shields visited once regularly to see a friend, always with ice cream in his hand.
But it is the relationships, not the surprises, that make the job meaningful.
“That is, 2 or 3 minutes you have to build a relationship,” he said about the passengers who go with him. “You are not just an elevator operator. You play the role of the psychiatrist. Feel your problems, problems … You can read it on your face.”
Siallia has seen children grow, from stroller walks to driver’s licenses. It has been the first -person residents who see in the morning, you want safe trips before they climb the hamptons, and sometimes the last when they go well.
“There was a big lady, in the 1980’s, they wanted to put her at home,” she said. “And she goes, Tony, I don’t want to go.” She started crying and said “I can’t believe this is my last time to the elevator.” “He died as a year later.”
Within the cabin, trust is currency.
“There is [residents] It has been there for more than 50 years, “said Sciallia.” You have to worry about people, their problems, their successes. A robot … will not mind. We care. “
The residents of the building are a feeling that they have supported Skiallia for personal losses with letters and a large bouquet of flowers when their parents died in recent years.
“This was the biggest act of kindness,” he said.
And, as modernization occurs, Sialia knows that the day will arrive when the lever is replaced by a button.
“I don’t know how much time I have,” he said. “But when the time comes … I will miss people. Nothing lasts forever.”
#Exclusive #elevator #operators #York #good #rare #job
Image Source : nypost.com