Space Needle Gets A Lift -- But New, High-Tech Elevator Cars Retain The Style That Elvis Knew

Elevated trivia

-- Estimated trips by each original Space Needle elevator in 31 years: 2.7 million.

-- Distance: About 520,000 miles, roughly a round trip to the moon and back.

-- Fees: 1962, $1. 1993, $6.

-- Passengers hauled: About 40 million.

-- Famous riders: Elvis. Danny Kaye. John Wayne. Jonas Salk. George Takei. George Burns. Richard Nixon.

-- Heaviest celebrity rider: Chubby Checker and the King of Tonga (tie).

The King is dead. And so, finally, is the Seattle Space Needle elevator he danced in 31 years ago.

While Seattle wasn't looking, all three original 1962 elevator cars - including the one Elvis graced during filming of "It Happened at the World's Fair" - have been replaced.

Their high-tech substitutes cost $1.5 million - one-third the price of the whole Space Needle in 1962. The final new lift, the Needle's service elevator, is scheduled to come on line this week.

Outside, the new cars are dead ringers for the old ones - those golden decongestant capsules the Needle has swallowed, burped up, swallowed and burped up for more than three decades.

But inside, they're a different animal. Lighter, stronger, faster. Able to scale tall buildings in a single bound. Air-conditioned, safety-sealed, computerized.

With the exception of exterior track lights that can change color with the mood of the Space Needle Groovy Track Light Operator, the cars are identical to the old ones. That's by design.

"The original design was a rather brilliant one," says Space Needle honcho Rod Kauffman, who actually met his wife in one of the old capsule elevators. "We thought it was important to maintain the integrity and look of the previous cars."

Oh, he was tempted to tinker. Kauffman admits this as he displays a conceptual drawing of what he calls the Darth (Ele)Vader. It's all angles and steel and motion with a pointed roof. Too George Lucas.

Another is a two-story model with big flat glass panels. Too Bellevue.

Kauffman ultimately instructed architect Donald Breiner to design a refined version of the original. His decision got the blessing of the Howard S. Wright family, whose members ride free to the top as if they own the place. They do.

Like other remodelers, Kauffman said, the Wrights worried what the neighbors would think. So they stuck with tradition.

The new steel cars were installed by an Otis Elevator crew headed by T.R. Kelly, who helped install the original elevators.

In two months of operation, minor problems have arisen, such as a sensor malfunction that left 24 tourists stuck 50 feet above Seattle Center for about an hour last weekend. All were given free dinners in the Space Needle restaurant.

Most other visitors have noticed a smoother ride and better view, particularly down low, where a generation of kids got smooshed up against the door and couldn't see out at all.

Some visitors ask what became of the golden oldies, which carried enough celebrities over the years to accumulate their own historical baggage.

Panels from the old cars are in storage at Seattle Center. The remaining panels, at least. Some already have been given away to longtime elevator operators. Other parts have been grabbed up by Needle aficionados who wanted their own piece of history.

A plan to reassemble one car and place it in a local museum fell through. Just as well. In a way, the new cars are historical exhibits themselves, working monuments to an old rule that even Coca-Cola has been known to forget.

Never tinker with success.