A stroll through downtown Port Townsend is always a stroll through history, a fact that draws a lot of our many visitors. It can also be lost on residents who are accustomed to the architecture and beauty of our old buildings, the faded murals that reflect our industrial past, and occasionally seeming artifacts that have taken up residence somewhere.  

So it is with that large scrap of metal next to the Dogs-a-Foot outdoor eatery. If you’ve lived here long enough you can probably picture it. 

It has the DNA of an elevator but what kind, and how did it get out in the open like that? 

The Otis passenger cab from the late 1800s could hold around 12 people and was the first one in Jefferson County. By then elevators, once powered by a hydraulic system, were now using electric motors.

The elevator was a part of St. John’s Hospital, which was constructed in the 1890s on what we now think of as Castle Hill. The citified contraption served the hospital for decades. 

Then came the “Roaring” 1920s when the hospital wanted a more modern look. Directors decided in 1922 to tear down the main part of St. John’s Hospital to make room for the future, and it didn’t include that particular elevator.  

Unfortunately, the following years didn’t treat the elevator kindly. Roy Bergstrom, a local man who owned the Army/Navy store on Water Street, bought this elevator and, only after buying it, realized it wasn’t going to work for whatever plan he might have had for it. He left it behind the Tree of Heaven on Polk Street, where the elevator sat for a little more than half a century. It rusted away in the elements for about 50 years.

In 1973 it got a chance at new life when Bob and Mary Haggard, with their friend Jim Brand, spotted it. They decided it would be perfect for running a hot dog and cold drink stand. Seemed like a good idea, considering that the ferry traffic at that time was just a block away. The idea was to tap the lines of hungry, thirsty customers waiting for the ferry to Whidbey Island. 

Mary Haggard wanted the business to be “an ecological adventure.” She even planned to sell the stale buns as seagull food.

Not quite five years later the trio decided to sell the elevator, when Julie and David McCulloch bought it. It became the Elevated Ice Cream Co. It was a big success, enough so that Elevated Ice Cream eventually outgrew the elevator and moved across the street to a bigger building, where it remains today. 

The elevator continued to hold some other food stands until eventually it was left empty, with no one to care for it and keep it in shape.

The elevator has some broken plastic on the outside and just one remaining sink inside. But it’s still holding its shape for whatever the next step might be in its long life.  

Marge Samuelson is a former archivist of the Jefferson County Historical Society and a longtime volunteer with the Jefferson County Genealogical Society. Charlie Mullen is a writer who works in the front office of The Leader.