Fred Ross is his name; running elevators, his game.
“It’s got its ups and downs,” says the man best known as Freddie.
Ba-da-bing.
Back on April 2, 1984, Ross, splendid in his suspenders and shined shoes, crossed Division Street near Orleans and strolled out of retirement and into the elevator at 900 N. Franklin St. That was when old River North industrial towers were just being gutted and turned into swank, artsy lofts; in strode the architects and graphic designers, out went the makers of dentures and mufflers and shoe polish.
The caged lift, a remnant from those industrial, non-automated days, required only one thing: someone to swing shut the gate, push the buttons, call out the floors and generally get people to where they needed to be. Ross, who had just ended 28 years in restaurants, mostly washing dishes, lived nearby in senior housing, and hadn’t taken to the notion of sitting around idle.
So Ross, a perpetually cheery fellow, has been hauling people up and down ever since–first at 900 N. Franklin and now next door at 920.
Which makes Ross one of the last–and longest-lasting–up-and-downers in town. The city’s chief elevator inspector estimates that only 15 real live humans are operating passenger lifts in Chicago these days.
“He’s an antique; he goes with the elevator,” says Abe Habibi, a regular passenger, en route to the fourth-floor holistic clinic at 920. “If he quit, the whole building would shut down.”
He is also something of an institution for the people who work, and have worked, in the century-old brick building that houses, among other destinations, the neighborhood fixture Kiki’s Bistro.
“Every morning you got a whole dose of Freddie, a whole eight floors of him. It was just like your first ray of sunshine. It was better than your first cup of coffee,” says Kathy Kelleher, employee relations representative for American Eagle Airlines, which had offices on the top floor from 1986 to 1992, and who still stays in touch with long letters at Christmas and, for years, phone calls right to the elevator phone to see how he was faring.
You know it’s a Friday, say those on his watch, when you step on the elevator and, without fail, Ross announces: “It’s get-away day!”
You know it has snowed when the little sign is posted outside the door: “Stomp your feet.” (He can’t abide a sloppy ride.) When the elevator’s on the fritz, he shepherds his would-be riders to the back freight elevator and, slowly, gets them to where they need to be.
And the riders through the years have paid back his kindness in kind: Whenever someone had a birthday, a plate of cake and ice cream was always dispatched to the elevator. He was a figure at every holiday party. And if he couldn’t make it, the party came to him.
“He was one of the family,” adds Peter Piper, former president of American Eagle, who mentions that Ross never failed to send a postcard from his many travels. “You could count on him to always have a smile.”
“The guy never seems to have a bad day,” says Bob Woods, leasing agent for Garrett Realty, which manages both buildings. “With Freddie, the cup is always half full.”
And Ross has no plans to have it any other way. At 76, he’s intent on staying till he can’t push the buttons or pull shut the creaky steel gate anymore.
Just one year ago, though, his future nearly dropped down the shaft when one of the higher-ups decided to put in an automated elevator at the eight-story 900 North building.
Ross, however, held on to his buttons. He just got moved one door north to the merely four-story 920 N. Franklin building (same owner), where he now splits the shift with 78-year-old Alonzo Moore, a saxophone player who has been working the buttons a mere 15 years. (Ross takes the mornings, first as the doorman at 900; then, midmorning, he heads over to the elevator at 920; Moore has the afternoon shift running the lift.)
It’s right cozy in there where Ross does his hauling these days. He’s got his transistor radio dangling from a shoestring tied to the elevator phone. And should he ever tire (he never does), he has an old office chair on wheels in the corner. There’s a space heater for winter, and a fan up in the ceiling come the hot, stuffy days of summer.
Back in the eight-story days, Ross says he walked in that lift at 8 on the dot and didn’t leave its 4-by-4-by-8-foot cube till the clock struck 5 in the evening.
“I pull that gate in the morning, I never left,” he says. “Didn’t eat. No lunch. I stayed put till quittin’ time, running folks up and down all day.”
Nowadays, with only four floors under his watch, “this job’s a breeze,” says Ross, who uses his downtime to deliver the mail, keep track of who’s at work in which office, track down the owner of a lost set of keys, point out the best read in the daily newspapers and give directions to any lost rider, all the while keeping an ear out for the telltale buzz letting him know that someone is awaiting his gate-swinging services. And just generally being the glue of the disparate world that is 900-920 N. Franklin.
“My very first day, he came to the door, saw that he’d never seen me before, grabbed my hand, walked me onto the elevator, walked me all the way to the front door, made sure I got where I was going. He’s been my favorite ever since,” says Mandee Mitchell, who two months ago started her job as front-desk coordinator for the Healing Quest Center on the fourth floor. “He’s a keeper.”
No arguing that–up, down or sideways.
