• by September 18, 2008

This is a fascinating hotel we're in for OMMA New York. It was built in 1985, I'm guessing part of the Times Square clean-up. The most interesting feature are the elevators.

Imagine glass pods on the OUTSIDE of the elevator shaft. All day long, pods going up and going down scores of floors, much of it open. But watching a pod descend seemingly INTO the floor is fascinating.

Even odder but highly efficient is the way you call the elevator. You punch in the destination floor and it tells you, by letter, which elevator to head for. Some computer deep in the bowels of Times Square keeps track of all those punched numbers to most efficiently take you where you need to go. Here's a YouTube real-time video from inside a pod: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afrjLdUP4sQ. Even better, from outside: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGknuh_z-RU&NR=1.

I'm not easily amazed, it's true, and it is, after all 2008 and the hotel is 23 years old but it's something to see!