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Two exterior views of 10 E. Fourth St., which is home to an intact James Bates hand elevator built in the 19th century, are pictured.
James Bates’ hand elevator at 10 E. Fourth St.
An ad from Woods’ Baltimore Directory for 1856-57.
United States Patent 113,836 granted to James Bates in 1871
Two exterior views of 10 E. Fourth St., which is home to an intact James Bates hand elevator built in the 19th century, are pictured.
James Bates’ hand elevator at 10 E. Fourth St.
An ad from Woods’ Baltimore Directory for 1856-57.
United States Patent 113,836 granted to James Bates in 1871
Hidden away on Frederick’s East 4th Street, there is a little-known gem of industrial history preserved inside what is now a salon. The two-story brick dwelling was constructed around 1860.
By 1887, a long horse shed had been added to the rear of the main structure, which extended almost to the rear of the French Second Empire building at what is now 326 N. Market St., which was occupied by D.C. Winebrenner & Son Wholesale Grocers.
The Market Street building was the business’ storefront, but also featured a long two-story brick warehouse. The horse shed constructed at Winebrenner’s East 4th Street property likely served the company’s delivery services.
By the mid-1890s, due to the company’s growing business, the horse shed was replaced with a two-story brick-and-frame warehouse. Now integral to the salon, this former warehouse is home to an intact James Bates hand elevator — a significant artifact of elevator history.
James Bates owned and operated an iron foundry and machine works in Baltimore starting in 1840 and throughout the second half of the 19th century.
He is a key player in that city’s industrial growth. Bates’ foundry produced castings, cranes, derricks, engines, boilers, iron fronts, iron settees and chairs, lamp posts, verandas, iron railings, and wrought-iron work.
But his specialty, for which he was “preeminently” known, was steam and hand elevators, dumb waiters, and hoisting machines.
The Woods’ Baltimore Directory for 1856-57 features a full-page advertisement for Bates’ “Hoisting Machines on Strictly Scientific Principles, for Warehouses.” The advertisement goes on to “guarantee a better Hoisting Machine for less money,” which was safe to use in lifting “goods some sixty to eighty feet 60 to 80 feet above his head.”
In 1871, Bates was granted a patent for his “Improvements in Hoisting-Machines or Elevators.”
The patent application described: “Heretofore it has been the practice to pulldown a lever by a rope to apply friction to the hoisting-wheel. But I have arranged mine differently, and applied a weight to pull down the lever and apply the friction constantly, when the lever is not raised by pulling a rope, as heretofore described.”
The firm went on to be granted an award for its hand elevator at the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia.
After James Bates died in 1896, his sons continued the foundry business, maintaining the particular focus on hoist machines and elevators for factories, warehouses, stores, hotels, and hospitals. The James Bates’ Sons Iron Foundry and Machine Works advertised in a 1901 Baltimore City directory that over 10,000 Bates’ hand elevators were in use at this time.
By 1911, D.C. Winebrenner & Son had constructed a large brick warehouse on South Carroll Street, with easy access to rail transportation.
Historic maps indicate Winebrenner’s East 4th Street property was utilized as a grocer warehouse for at least another 10 years, while the company’s Market Street presence faded well before then.
Around this same time, hand elevators were frequently replaced with the newer electric elevators. In Frederick, this included the old hand elevators at City Hospital and C.E. Cline’s furniture establishment on South Market Street.
In 2008, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), a program of the National Park Service, documented a Bates hand elevator before it was removed from a building in Baltimore and reinstalled at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. HAER documentation on file in the Library of Congress describes the elevator as “a rare surviving example.”
Another example remains intact in Washington, D.C., in the neighborhood now known as Penn Quarter in a building that was occupied by a grocer in the 19th century.
It is unknown how many extant examples of this important industrial innovation remain. Frederick is fortunate to have what appears to be a relatively rare industrial artifact, in situ, nonetheless.
Lisa Mroszczyk Murphy is a historic preservation planner for the city of Frederick. She can be reached at preservationmatters@cityoffrederickmd.gov.
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