Has anyone here ever seen or worked on one of these? To be clear, I'm not referring to "water hydroelectric" elevators, which use primarily water as the hydraulic fluid, but have a pump unit and otherwise operate fairly similar to a modern hydro. I think these were installed as late as the 1950s-1970s in California, and can still be found in service today.
I'm referring to very old types of hydraulic elevator from roughly the 1920s or earlier. This includes city water hydraulic elevators (water flows in from city mains to go up, water released into the sewer to go down), and early recirculating systems, which I think maintained a constant water pressure in the system, potentially for multiple cars, with a single pump unit (unlike modern hydraulic elevators, where the pump directly pushes the elevator up).
From what I have heard, the Flatiron Building in NYC still had water-hydraulic elevators in passenger service until 1999 or so, serving about 22 landings! I would love to have the chance to talk to someone that worked on them.
The Fitzwilly's Building in Northampton, MA had a water hydraulic elevator still in passenger service until 2017. This might have been the last water hydraulic elevator in passenger service in the United States.
If anyone has seen or worked on one of these in the past, I would be very curious to hear about it. I am especially curious to know of any installations that are still in service in the present day (I assume they would most likely be freight elevators).
