“The lights all went out,” and the elevators stopped while JFK was murdered. Shelley and Lovelady were near the bottom of the back staircase, by the electrical panel... and Vickie Adams saw them ... until everyone's story changed...

[Andrej Stancak]

55 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Exactly where did one access the top of the passenger elevator shaft, and are there any photos of that area, regardless of which floor it was?

Paul, my understanding is that you cannot access the shaft from the top (e.g., from the sixth floor in case of TSBD). Any service check of the area above the lift (above the 4th floor) had to be done by moving the lift car just below the level of the fourth floor and stepping on the roof of the car. There was most likely a ladder in the shaft (above the fourth floor) allowing to climb up to the top of the shaft. However, one could not break through into the room above the shaft by standing on the top of the ladder and pushing the roof of the shaft because that roof (which was also the floor of the sixth floor) was stiffened to prevent an accident if a board on the sixth floor would loosen. Another way of checking the area above the lift (the fifth floor) was moving the lift to below the level of the fourth floor, opening the door, stepping on the roof of the car and then having an assistant move the car up to its normal 4th floor level. The technician standing on the top of the car would then effectively be on the fifth floor and could do the necessary maintenace there in this way.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Paul Jolliffe]

Andrej:

Thanks for the information. If I understand you correctly, you are saying it would be impossible to access the top of this passenger elevator from anywhere except inside the elevator shaft itself. And therefore, no one, not a technician, not a conspirator, not an employee of the TSBD, no one could ever get to that elevator shaft save by entering the doors to the shaft with the elevator car itself lowered below that floor. Which means that no one could have entered the elevator shaft except via the fourth floor or below.

If there are no exceptions to this ever, and certainly no exceptions for this particular passenger elevator in the TSBD, then perhaps you might assert that. (With any documentation that we laymen might look at, if you would please.)

As someone who has zero technical knowledge of how elevator trap doors can be accessed, I'll take your word for it. If your statement is correct, then the elevator escape theory is dead. But then, I am curious: why didn't you raise this point on the first page of this thread?

[Jim Hargrove]

6 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

The escape from the sixth floor using the elevator shaft would require an opening on the sixth floor at the area above the lift shaft. I cannot see it on any photograph of the sixth floor. Neiher it is drawn on the map of the sixth floor. There was no such opening, and piles of books covered about the half of the floor area above the passenger lift

Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that, at the time of the assassination, the Warren Commission told us that plywood was being installed on the sixth floor?  And it clearly was, at least at some point, as shown below.

[Tony Krome]

The floor laying crew had only just started laying plywood on the sixth floor the week of the assassination. The area they started laying was a strip approx 10 feet wide that ran from north to south along the WEST wall

The edge you have highlighted above may be an older repair or re-enforcement over original boards

Look closely at the top surface of the raised boards, it shows north/south strips. Now look closely at the plywood in the same area in the photo directly above. It appears plywood has replaced the older repair and that would explain the overall even surface seen above.

 

 

Edited March 6, 2019 by Tony Krome

[Jim Hargrove]

"Otis lift in a Paris hospital (includes opening the escape hatch)"

Below is a 2 1/2-minute video from YouTube.  Scroll to 2:00 and see how easy it is to open an Otis ceiling hatch from inside the elevator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7I2E3QiVoI

 

[Jim Hargrove]

"How to Get out of an Elevator when it's stuck! - Part 2"

Below is a link to a short YouTube video showing people climbing out of an elevator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA4p2IPWt54

[Andrej Stancak]

Jim:

The Otis lift had a square on the top deck looking like a safety exit hatch but it could only be open with a special key; just pressing on it did not help. It is a law that the hatch can be only open from outside the lift. The other video appears weird - had the chair in the lift?  The passengers smiled and it all looked strange. It certainly did not look like a US or EU country with strict safety rules.

Please consider this: the lift shaft was bricked from the bottom to the top of the fifth floor. The shaft had its own roof which was below the wooden floor of the sixth floor. Even if you would remove the boards on the sixth floor, you could not jump into the shaft as there would be still a shaft roof. It is an illusion to think that if you would remove few boards you could jump straight into the shaft - this is called safety. 

I see no sign of any opening on the sixth floor in the vicinity of the second east window on the sixth floor before or after placing new plywood in the pictures you posted. If there was important access to the shaft there, it would be either ring-fenced or sign-posted, and it would be on the floor map of the sixth floor. There was no such opening because the shaft was never meant to be accessible from the top. 

Edited March 6, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Jim Hargrove]

Below is a YouTube link to a fully operational, permitted elevator in Omaha, NE.  Go to about 1:35 and watch as the camera is pointed up through the open emergency hatch.  You can see the inside of the elevator shaft as the elevator ascends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hHpqRD8SMA

In the clip linked below, escape hatches in two different Texas elevators are shown.  Scroll to about 1:50 to see the escape hatch in a permitted 1954 Otis elevator in use in Austin, TX.  Another escape hatch in a Univ. of Texas in Austin elevator appears at about the 4:50 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEp2J_mqOKU

A fourth elevator, a 1964 Otis model at Cole Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania, is shown in the clip below.  The escape hatch can be seen around the 30 and 1:15 marks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE939xM1sc0

[Andrej Stancak]

Jim:

some elevators have safety hatches, some not. Some have them visible to the passengers and some not. However, the safety hatches in all lifts open from ouside as the law requires else passengers such as young male adolescents would roam in the elevator shafts just for fun...

Do you know what type of elevator was installed in the TSBD? The Sixth Floor Museum could know this information, and they also can have the 1961 architect building plans which would show the construction of the shaft. The idea that the elevator would hang on the wooden boards and joints of the sixth floor appears unlikely.

 

 

Edited March 6, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Paul Bacon]

I just joined the forum, but I've been lurking here for many years.  FWIW.

This morning I spent a little time looking for the Fifth edition of ASME  Standard A17.1, Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators.  The 1955 version is probably the applicable version in our case.  I was looking for any rules governing the "escape" hatch security.  I've not found anything definitive, but I have a feeling that hatch security was not made a serious issue until later when a major revamping of the code took place in 1980's.  Elevator surfing had become a thing.  Before then the hatches were, I'm thinking, accessible from the inside and secured by wing nuts or some type of other hardware.  It was, back then, thought of an escape hatch.  So, I don't think we should write off the idea of easy access to the top of the cab via the ceiling hatch.

To pose another question, did that passenger elevator go all the way into the basement, possibly?  Then escape could be made up the basement stairs to the first floor.  Was there a bulkhead in the basement that was accessible to the outside of the building...?

And finally, I just wanted to offer an observation regarding the electricity in the building being being turned off, then back on.  The Tom Dillard photo that was taken 15 seconds after the last gunshot showed a figure in the western most 6th floor window.  Above the head of the figure and in the background, is a ceiling light that was on.  So the power was restored by then.

[Andrej Stancak]

Paul:

welcome to the forum, I hope you will enjoy it.

Can you please post a link to the ASME standard 1955? I would also like to know about the rules pertaining the shaft and the roof of the shaft.

In my view, we need to see the architecture plans of the building and to know the type of the passenger elevator as of 1963 to be able to to evaluate what was possible and what was not.

As to the light seen on the sixth floor, there was also a light in in the lobby right behind the glass door (1st floor) in Darnell film, taken some 30 s after the shooting.  The reasons for  Baker and Truly not being able to call any of the two freight elevators could be that only one of the elevators had the ability to be called from a remote floor and only if the elevator door was properly closed. The other elevator could not be called  at all. There could be a simple explanation for the failure to call a lift when the two men got to the back of the first floor.

[Paul Bacon]

Andrej,

I'm sorry but I never found it.  Looking again at my post, I can see how it sounds as if I was looking through it, but I meant to indicate I was looking for it.  I hit a lot of pages, but this is a page that gave me ideas of where to look.

https://www.elevatorbooks.com/Content/Site125/FilesSamples/184718CaporaleO_00000105883.pdf 

About a fifth of the way down, it shows the cover of the book.

[Jim Hargrove]

Tony….

I really don’t see the n/s marks of floorboards you mention above, but even if they are there, the fact remains that it is an amazing coincidence that the sixth floor was being covered in plywood at the time of the Kennedy assassination.  Yet another cover-up?

Andrej and Paul….

 I don’t know what building codes were for elevators and escape hatches, but even if they were locked, it is a simple matter to unlock them for anyone in charge of the building or building maintenance.  Here, again, is a YouTube video showing the top hatch being opened from inside an Otis elevator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7I2E3QiVoI

[Jim Hargrove]

John A. has been studying the TSBD re-flooring work being performed at the time of the assassination. The Warren Commission Report admitted that on 11/22/1963 the 6^th floor was in the process of being covered with plywood. John notes that a rifle could have easily been concealed and brought to the 6^th floor in the day(s) prior to the assassination in the stacks of plywood and other construction materials required for the project. I’d add the obvious by saying that the re-flooring of the 6^th floor would also permanently conceal evidence of an escape by the assassin(s) into the passenger elevator shaft extending up to just below the sixth floor.

John added the following in an email note:

This is interesting.

It appears that the 6th floor (and possibly the 5th floor) had either one or two or three layers of wood on the floor on 11/22/63, depending on the location.

The first layer, seen in the photo of the NW steps, going down, are 2 x 6 boards nailed to the girders (these same boards can be seen in photos of the "snipers nest"). On the 6th floor these 2 x 6 boards run east and west, while the large girders run north and south. 

The second layer of wood boards, shown in this photo, were laid on top of the original 2 x 6 boards, and run 90 degrees in the opposite the direction. This 2nd layer appears to be 1 x 4 boards, and they run north and south. The attached photo shows the end of one board (4" wide) and the long edge of another board. These boards appear to have been well used from this photo, but these 1 x 4 boards only cover a portion of the 6th floor.

The third layer of wood is comprised of 4 x 8 sheets of 3/4 inch plywood, which were being installed by TSBD workers under the direct supervision of Bill Shelley. A photo, taken of the "snipers nest" and east windows, shows the newly installed plywood laying at the same level throughout the 6th floor. In other words, the 1 x 4 boards shown in the attached photo had to either be removed or additional 1 x 4 boards had to be installed prior to the installation of the plywood. 

I don't know if there is any significance to these multiple layers of wood, but the installation of plywood on the 6th floor of the TSBD at the time of the assassination (the floor from which JFK was allegedly shot) has always bothered me. If nothing else, a rifle could have been easily concealed and brought to the 6th floor days before 11/22/63 while hidden in a stack of plywood (look at the trolley cart below the window, used for hauling construction materials/books, etc).
 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Jim Hargrove

[John Butler]

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 11:06 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

For John Butler....

Thanks very much for your recent work attempting to identify a sixth floor vent for the passenger elevator shaft which extended up to the fifth floor.  John A. did some work the other day studying the photo you used and comparing it to an architectural sketch of the first floor, which, among other things, identifies the six-by-six array of square vertical columns used to support the building.  These columns were directly on top of each other for each floor of the building, and so the positioning of these columns would be the same on the first and the sixth floors.  John ultimately decided that the object you were considering was near the north wall of the building, not above the position of the passenger elevator shaft.

Architect Robert Cutler did some technical drawings of Dealey Plaza and the TSBD.  Below is his sketch of the first floor, that John annotated, using yellow or green lines (different people see them differently) to show what John believes is the camera’s field of view in the sixth floor photo you were studying.

 

 

Thanks Jim,

I have been making to many mistakes lately.  I'm going to take some time off and think about continuing with posting on the forum. 

Regardless, keep up the good work.  You and John Armstrong are making a difference.