NEWLY MODERNIZED Westinghouse/KONE Polaris Traction Elevators at 55 Public Square in Cleveland, OH

Filmed on October 25th, 2023.
Here we have a set of elevators that got modded very nicely with KONE Polaris a couple years ago. KONE did an EXCELLENT job with the modernization, the elevators are VERY fast and smooth and the Polaris interface is very smooth and responsive, and the new KONE voice is VERY CLEAR! However, despite the fact KONE did do a great job on this mod, I do not approve of it one bit. And that is because it replaced a VERY RARE Set of Elevators! 2 Banks of FULLY ORIGINAL Westinghouse Selectomatic Elevators with POP OUT Buttons! And despite the fact this building is 22 floors and over 65 years old, these elevators were STILL fully original UNTIL JUST 2 YEARS AGO when KONE modernized these during the buildings renovation into Apartments on the lower levels of the building.
The Pop Out buttons are EXTREMELY RARE and VERY UNIQUE and because they actually light up, i think they're honestly cooler than Otis Pop Out, and because this building is over 20 floors and with how fast these elevators go, I'm DEFINITELY SUPER BUMMED OUT that I missed out on these! (Along with the nearby Rockefeller Building which is now boarded up and abandoned). On the positive side, I at least got to see one set of Pop Out Westinghouse Selectomatics (video link • MUST WATCH!!! ULTRA RA... ) at another building (which sadly enough those will be modded soon too), and I'm ddefinitely grateful I got to see those, but I am sad that I missed out on rest of the known ones Cleveland had up until very recently. Interestingly, only some of the elevators in each of the two banks here were modded while the other cars were decomissioned, but that doesn't change the fact that the Pop Outs here are gone and that those decomissioned cars will surely never run again.
With that all being said though, I hope you guys enjoy the video, this one being of some Very Nice, albeit very tragically modded elevators.
Installed in 1958. (Westinghouse Selectomatic with Pop Out buttons)
Modernized in 2021-2022. (KONE Revolution Polaris mod with New Motors, New Controllers, Fixtures, New Lanterns, etc. Only the cabs and doors remain original, half of the elevators remain uuntouched but decommissioned).
Speed: 800 FPM
Camera details:
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
Mic: Built In

[@TechNerdNolan]

Kone has been really killing it with these mods. Sad to see the old elevators go though

[@dakotamcaleer6113]

Interesting…

[@Dwall44]

WOW, well it makes me happy that some of them are decommissioned in the hopes that there are still some COP”s in the cars assuming they’re still in the shaft. Were there any original call stations or lanterns? Also, how many banks are there in this building?

[@FloridianElevators]

The call stations and lanterns for the decomissioned cars are still intact on the lower floors but the call stations are Adam's replacements. In case you didn't notice on 22, one of the two decomission high rise cars still had its lantern intact. And this building has 2 banks of elevators, 7 or 8 for Low Rise (1-11) and then this bank of 5 High Rise cars (11-22). The Service Elevator I showed in the Middle of the video was a Black Button prior to the mod

[@Dwall44]

@@FloridianElevators oh wow, thank you! Well, I’m actually completely blind so don’t have any vision which is why I ask these kind of questions. Do you know if anybody got parts from here or no?

[@Dwall44]

@@FloridianElevators I was kind of wondering why they just left half of them on modernized, but then I remembered how expensive modernizations are.

[@FloridianElevators]

@Dwall44 Sadly I don't believe any parts were saved. A former filmer from the area I talk to tried to get them, but he had no luck unfortunately. He is trying to get parts from both Rockefeller and the building with the bank that I did get to film though, hopefully it goes well as he told me he'd give a me a COP and call station. ;)

[@FloridianElevators]

@Dwall44 If I had to make an educated guess, they probably only modernized half cause they don't expect the elevators to recieve the amount of traffic they used to and so they didn't want to spend the money on modding all of them. However, if they wanted to mod all of the cars eventually if they feel the need to, they could, I have seen it happen before. Now, what I'd love to see if anything is for the Pop Out cars to be brought back from the dead in their existing form, but we all know that's not gonna happen. And considering the fact the call stations and lanterns are missing on some floors, I question how much actually remains of those cars.