If it is about redrawing the history of the Eixample with a fine brush, the elevator can be said to have put everyone in their place. In 1921, Juan Pich i Pon, who was not yet mayor at that time, but was president of the Chamber of Urban Property, was the first wealthy Barcelonan who preferred to move to the attic of his estate because, in addition to being a sunnier and better place ventilated, it perfectly symbolized his place in what could be described as the social trophic scale.
Perhaps yours (because it is not preserved) was an elevator of those that came furnished with a velvety benchbecause the speed of the first elevators was Tortuguesca, but what comes to the point is not what the unit with which Pich i Pin went up to the top floor of number 9 in Plaza de Catalunya was like, but rather how are they (at least ) 420 lifts that Barcelona City Council has already registered and that form part of a precious collective historical heritage that is worth preserving.
This is being a very patient exploration. Through the urban records kept by the municipal archives, the valuable help of the union of companies in the sector and street work (that is, going farm by farm and asking for permission to enter), Barcelona City Council has already geolocated 420 lifts installed from the end of the 19th century to 1936. In this first phase of the search, he has focused mainly on the Eixample, with the conviction, confirmed by the facts, that it is there where the most categorizable elevators can be found.
But the field work will continue, with what objective? Preserve them. The plan, already implemented in a couple of cases, plans to provide Financial aid to the farms to renew the elements punished by the passage of timelike the guides, formerly made of wood, but, above all, they do not come off the elevators and replace them with more modern ones.
In a city that has paid attention to the loss of iconic shops (which on occasions even carried Antoni Gaudí’s architectural signature) for the simple reason that if the building as a whole was not listed, neither were the storefronts, nor was the initiative to ensure a long live elevators is a happy idea.
So what The arrival of the elevator in Barcelona could not have been more eventful. Although it is in a nebulous way, without documents that prove it unquestionably, it is supposed that the first elevator in the city was the one that was installed inside the column that supports the monument to Christopher Columbus. It was built for the Universal Exhibition of 1888 and on June 1, 1888, the mayor Francesc de Paula Rius i Taulet rode on it on the maiden voyage. Had to rescue him. The invention broke down.
In defense of those responsible for that disappointment, it can be said that the elevator as a means of transporting people and not goods was a very young mechanical device. It was not until 1870 that the first in the world was installed, of course and for obvious reasons, In New York. The fact that a few years earlier the Otis company had designed a braking mechanism for those cases in which the cable broke undoubtedly contributed to taking that step.
The case of Barcelona, although somewhat later in time, is especially interesting because the irruption of the elevator ran parallel in time to the birth and subsequent growth of the Eixample, a giant real estate territory, which occupied an area 10 times greater than the intramural city.
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There were so many wooden elevators that were installed over the years that, in their own way,they became part of the interior landscape of each farm without the neighbors and visitors ending up being surprised by their beauty. Hence, in so many cases they were retired in the name of modernity and ended up splintered in a container.
A shame, with how cinematically grateful they have always been. Juanjo Puigcorbé returned home naked in one of those elevators at the end of ‘L’orgia’, by Francesc Bellmunt, and, with great naturalness and to the despair of her mother (“fill meu, you are not bé”), she talked with her neighbor who had just left her apartment. In that scene, the elevator should even be considered a fourth character because, although quiet, it provided credibility to the dialogue between the protagonists. It may be one of the 420 now registered.