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Wednesday, 08 September 2010 14:54

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

When Larry Woods was a kid, the highlight of going downtown from his home in Mount Lebanon was on the 11th and 12th floors of what was then Kaufmann’s.

“We would park and take the skywalk into the store and I’d ask my dad, ‘When can we go up and ride the wooden escalators?’”

He still has a fancy for the wooden escalators and alerted me that they are there. While he has been back home for a visit, in part to make extra money as an extra in “The Abduction,” we arranged to go to see them together. (That's him in the photo)

We met under the Kaufmann’s clock today and went into Macy's, gliding up up and up on the wide, gray metal escalators that everyone associates with the way escalators look. Each floor we ascended to was sparse than the one before ... until we got off on 11, and there was the prize: the wooden escalators straight ahead. I gasped.

The wood is honey amber, the panels you stand on are corrugated wood slats and only about a foot wide. The Otis panel on the floor beside the bottom step has fancy noodly design. The people who work at and patronize the Ecotage Salon and Spa are among the few people who see these escalators regularly.

Kids may not know to use the word elegant or realize they're being charmed when they're being charmed, but early on we know elegant when we see it and charm when we feel it. I remember being enchanted by and returning to look at all sorts of charming, elegant things as a kid -- an unexpected cranny, little footbridges and old-fashioned gates, the fun puzzle of mosaic walkways, the skinny covered passages between houses seeming like secrets.

Larry lives in Alexandria, Va., where he designs web sites. He wants people to know the escalators are up there — and that they worked into this century — and hopes they aren’t destroyed by any current or subsequent owner of the building.

“These could be featured in a movie shoot,” he said. “To me, these are what separated Kaufmann’s from Horne’s and Gimbels, these wooden escalators.”

As we glided down the ugly escalators of today to get to the first level, he said, “Maybe it’s time for me to move back here. I think about it all the time.”

Comments (3)

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written by bitsyraggmopp, September 09, 2010 - 08:11 AM

I so agree with Larry. The wooden escalators sated a kid's sense of discovery. Move back to Pittsburgh, Larry. It is time.

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written by jonpgh, September 12, 2010 - 12:09 PM

Kids being kids us Southsiders wouldn't seem to venture past Kaufmann's were we would "play" on the escalators running up the down escalators. When it was still allowable to smoke in the stores there always was the errant butt getting caught by the "combing" at the end of them. It's amazing we weren't kicked out of the store.

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written by bestbatteryshops, September 28, 2010 - 05:19 AM

When it was still allowable to smoke in the stores there always was the http://www.batterylaptoppower....n-6400.htm errant butt getting caught by the "combing" at the end of them. It's amazing we weren't kicked out of the http://www.batterylaptoppower....e-a100.htm store.

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