We rode a "classic" 1930's-style elevator,
complete with an an elevator operator
(in British English, usually a lift man,
lift woman, or lift girl), a person
specifically employed to operate
a manually-operated elevator.
Manual elevators are controlled
by a large lever which cause the
elevator to stop or run and
sometimes also regulate speed,
and typically required some skill
or sense of timing to be able to
consistently stop the elevator level
with the doorway of a floor.
On to the rooftop bar for a Mojito
or two before reversing course to
walk back to where our taxis were waiting.
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It's an Otis Elevator: From humble beginnings in Yonkers, New York,
to the worldwide industry leader it is today, Otis' long history is
a testament to safety, service and performance,
and interesting reading, too.
There are five floors, built with an eclectic set of
characteristics of 20th-century style architecture.
It was built in 1924 on a site that previously had been occupied
by an old family house on the corner of Calle Obispo and Mercaderes
(Bishop and Merchants Streets) in La Habana Vieja (Old Havana).
It is a frequent tourist destination because it was home to
Ernest Hemingway for seven years in the 1930s.
This hotel since has gained international note from its
most famous long-time tenant:
in 1932 a room on the upper (fifth) floor became the "first home"
in Cuba of writer Ernest Hemingway, who enjoyed the views of Old Havana,
and the harbor sea in which he fished frequently in his yacht Pilar.
Hemingway rented the room for $1.50 per night
($1.75 for double occupancy) until mid-1939,
when he transferred his winter residence from Key West)
to a house in the hills near Havana, Finca Vigia,
which he shared with Martha Gellhorn (they were married in 1940).
Hemingway began his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls,
a novel of the Spanish Civil War which he had witnessed
over the previous several years, in the room in the Ambos Mundos,
on March 1, 1939.
Today, his hotel room, No. 511, is presented as the author might have left it,
and is a small museum in the middle of the establishment,
with tours given regularly in the daytime.
The corner of the ground floor hotel lobby also has two walls
of framed photographs dedicated to Hemingway.
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