Smithsonian Eyes Ancient Escalator

BOSTON - In a city that boasts the country's first subway system, Yankee ingenuity and New Englanders' thrifty ways have kept another relic running longer than anywhere else in the world.

A 1914 Otis escalator with wooden treads, similar to one first displayed at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition, still carries commuters from an underground subway station to the street above in the heart of a downtown shopping district.

Travelers board the clanging, narrow machine cautiously, gingerly stepping onto a row of handcrafted slats of Vermont maple. Most feet are large enough to safely span the gaps between the slats, but children, animals and women in high heels beware.

Homeless people turn it off because the constant clickety-clack disrupts the silence between trains.

But it is a gem to people such as William Worthington, noises, slats and all.

``Who has not felt a little thrill when about to hop onto an escalator,'' Worthington, a specialist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, wrote in a 1989 article for American Heritage Of Invention & Technology magazine.

The museum collects all sorts of people movers, including elevators. But it doesn't have a single escalator.

``This is more or less a priority,'' Worthington said recently, noting the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has promised him the ancient escalator. ``One should be saved.''

``We'd like to give them the Downtown Crossing escalator,'' MBTA General Manager Thomas Glynn told a state legislative committee. But the MBTA can't afford the $50,000 to replace an escalator that still works.

And even if the replacement money came through, Glynn is not so sure they would give up the relic.

``Bostonians like old stuff,'' he said.

The city's trolley system began in 1889. Part of it was converted to underground operations in 1897, making it the oldest subway system in the nation, with more than 30 miles of track.

The escalator, designed by Jesse Reno around the turn of the century, is driven by a single electric motor. It climbs 34 feet at a 25-degree angle and carries up to 7,200 people an hour, according to a history published in Elevator World magazine.

The steep incline combined with a slope on the worn treads makes riding a delicate balancing act. Passengers grip rubber-covered steel handrails for the slow journey upward.

In the early days, getting off was so tricky the Metropolitan Transit Authority hired ``catchers'' to help riders.