Home / Archive / Movin' on Up: Maydestone elevator and El Dorado Iron Works Inc.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Feature: April 2011
Movin’ on Up
Story by Linda DuBois | Photo by Ken James
D&S Development is renovating a century-old elevator for the Maydestone Apartment Building.
Even getting to their rooms in the four-story building at 15th and J streets in Sacramento will be no less evocative of days gone by.
Thanks to the craftsmanship of El Dorado Iron Works Inc., when residents step into the building’s elevator, the cabin will look almost exactly the way it did about 100 years ago. The intricate wrought-iron design on the walls, ceiling and doors has been restored to the original appearance given when Otis Elevator Co. made it more than a century ago. What would be hard for anyone to guess is the time and care that went into preserving this piece of history.
To meet safety standards, the elevator — cables, motors, hydraulics and controls — needed replacement. But to allow room in the shaft for the newer, sturdier track and support equipment, the new elevator is smaller than the original. So simply refurbishing the wrought-iron motif wouldn’t do. It needed to be gingerly cut down to fit the smaller space in such a way that would preserve the original design.
“We had to shrink it down and still keep everything symmetrical. That’s not an easy task,” says Bob Konjkav of El Dorado Iron Works. “It takes some delicate work.”
Most of this work was done in the four-year-old company’s Gold River workshop by Konjkav’s business partner Samad Farkoosh and a contract worker hired by D&S Development Inc., the company handling the Maydestone renovation. The back panel needed to be cut down by a foot, but it couldn’t be as simple as cutting 12 inches off one side. That would make the overall design look off-
center. Nor could they cut 6 inches off each side. That would splice right through a design. So, they cut 8 inches off one side and 4 off the other.
When pieces of the elevator were still strewn all over his workshop, Konjkav was pondering the trickiest section: the ceiling.
“There are precast elements that go on the corners,” Konjkav says. “Now, the challenge we are facing is, with the current code, we have to have an access door, and it doesn’t give us enough room for that — but we’ve got to make it happen.”
They ended up cutting a 16-by-24-inch hole, then making the door by attaching two sections with hinged clasps. To camouflage the cuts, they added more flat bars to make that detail part of the ceiling character.
Throughout the entire project were sections of worn, paint-chipped, ironwork that had to be replaced.
The elevator’s main doors are new but designed to look old and blend in. The entire process — cutting down the design, welding, painting, fitting it together, taking it apart, moving it to the building and installing it in the new elevator shaft — took 14 workdays.
After factoring labor, material and transportation costs, Konjkav estimates it would cost somewhere around $20,000 for the project, a small percentage of the estimated $7.4 million the building renovation will cost, according to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
Costs and time considered, this kind of intricate custom work “doesn’t get you a whole lot of money,” Konjkav says. “I call it a work of love.”
He guesses the ironworkers who made the elevator a century ago had that same love. When they began taking it apart, Konjkav and Farkoosh were amazed by the craftsmanship.
Pointing at a panel lying on the shop floor, Konjkav shakes his head. “This is all ornamental. And keep in mind, 100 years ago, they didn’t have welding machines, so they put all the pieces together with screws by hand.”
Despite its age, the elevator pieces held up.
“When we started taking it apart, some of the tags were dated 1887,” Konjkav says.
The original elevator’s maker, New York-based Otis Elevator Co., is named for its founder Elisha Otis, whose invention of a reliable safety brake is commonly given credit for starting the elevator industry.
Most of El Dorado Iron Works’ projects are structure features, such as railings, awnings or gates, with the work split between workshops on Gold River Road and a larger yard on Bradshaw Road.
It has done several restoration projects on artistic ironwork on local and San Francisco buildings, but Konjkav and Farkoosh have never heard of any ironworker restoring a historic elevator before. “It’s so much easier to just put in a new elevator, but this developer wanted to preserve the features,” says Konjkav.
Sara Lebastchi of D&S Development says the detail in Maydestone’s elevator is rarely seen in this modern age.
“More specifically to the Sacramento region, an elevator dating back to the early 20th century is exceptional,” she says. “Having the opportunity to restore its features to its original beauty is a chance our company would not pass up. The craftsmanship and integrity in the original elevator are unique to the building, and in restoring it, we get to relive its history.”
D&S has a history of renovating old buildings. After completing the iLofts in Old Sacramento and a mixed-use project at 14th and R streets, the developer began working with Kuchman Architects PC, the city of Sacramento Historic Preservation Department and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency to bring the Mission-Revival Maydestone building back to life.
Maydestone was occupied by an eclectic group of tenants for most of its years, but sat vacant following an October 2003 fire. When completed, likely by summer, it will have 32 rental apartment units, mostly studios, over four stories, plus a basement with a common area, gym equipment and storage.
