Debra Campbell, city manager in Asheville, North Carolina, took a symbolic last ride in historic City Hall’s last manually operated elevator on May 24, fist-bumping the operator as she debarked. The ride preceded the formal commissioning of the building’s restored, modernized three-bank elevator system. While the elevator operator is now gone, what remains include key elements of the original 1928 cab design. City of Asheville Capital Projects staff, along with Weaver Cooke Construction, MHAWorks Architecture and United Elevator Services, carefully removed layers of paint to uncover the glamor of the original design — gold-gilded crown molding complemented by hunter-green wall paint. A historic color study performed in 1988 guided many of the cab design decisions, including preserving the brass and buttons of the original, manually operated system which, according to the city, “allows each cab to serve as a moving museum of our city’s past.” Since City Hall is an operational building, elevators were modernized sequentially starting in 2020, and now include fully automated controls and safety features.
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