Guaranty Building - Table of Contents

Guaranty / Prudential Building
28 Church Street, Buffalo, New York
Building Owner's Home Page - Hodgson Russ, LLP



The Original Guaranty Building Elevators

Research by Craig Woodward and Harry Meyer

The Guaranty Building originally (1896) had elevators which were operated with Sprague Elevators motors. 

Frank J. Sprague (1857-1934) was an electrical engineer and entrepreneur, an electrical pioneer. He initially worked for Thomas Edison but resigned and formed the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company (1884-1890). He became a leading provider of electric motors and in 1888 installed the first major electric trolley car system in Richmond, Va.

In the late 1880's most elevators were steam or hydraulic driven; the design of the few electric motor-driven elevators in service was not suitable of passenger service in the high rise buildings then under construction in large cities.  Sprague combined his electric motor and controls with an apparatus developed by Charles Pratt and formed the Sprague Electric Elevator Company (1890-1932). The Guaranty Building had one of the early Sprague elevator installations.

NYC  investors  bought the building in 1900 from The Guaranty Building Company (owned by Guaranty Construction of Chicago and other Buffalo and Chicago investors), by forming a new corporation named The Prudential Building Company.  These NYC investors  made the decision in 1903 to replace the Sprague Elevators mechanics with the water hydraulic elevators which lasted until the early 1960's.  The long screw mechanism of the Sprague system was not particularly reliable and notes in minutes of The Prudential Building Company indicate that they were at risk to losing tenants to the much larger Ellicott Square Building (which had opened eight months later in November 1896).  Because all the tenant bathrooms were then on the 7th floor, slow elevator service was a major nuisance and a source of many complaints.


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