Madison Riehle
Editor-in-Chief

Ninety-nine years after the completion of the Flood Mansion, the historical Flood elevator is being renovated due to inconsistencies with the elevator’s daily functions.

“I’ve been dependent on the elevator for a few years,” junior Talayah Hudson, who has had multiple knee surgeries, said. “With an elevator this old, it has its own problems that a normal elevator technician can’t fix.”

The elevator often fails to level the car with the floor, the door fails to open, and the elevator sometimes goes to the wrong floor or doesn’t come at all if the doors are not fully closed, according to Hudson.

The problems include the elevator not reaching the floor, the doors not opening, the elevator going to the wrong floor and the doors not fully closing, according to Hudson, who takes the elevator daily.

“Ultimately we will have a working elevator which will be very helpful for people with disabilities and our facilities staff who needs to bring things up and down,” Head of School Rachel Simpson said. “This elevator right now is extremely temperamental.”

The elevator, which will be renovated by Star Elevators, a San Francisco-based company, will include a new cab, motor, landing openings and fixtures, according to Facilities Manager Geoff DeSantis.

“We are making sure to take into consideration the amazing architecture of the Flood Mansion during the modernization,” DeSantis said. “We want to modernize without making the elevator look out of place.”

The Flood elevator is the oldest working residential elevator in the City of San Francisco, as it was original to the building.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Hudson said. “No other place, let alone school, in San Francisco can say that. I definitely take pride in the fact that we still have it.”

James Leary Flood acquired his fortune from his father James Clair Flood, who was one of four people who owned the Comstock Lode, a vein of silver ore found in Nevada, according to San Francisco Genealogy.

Flood took his fortune to San Francisco and built the original Flood Mansion at 1000 California Street, now the Pacific-Union Club, where James L. Flood took it over before it was damaged in the Great Earthquake of 1906.

The current Flood Mansion was completed in 1915, just in time to view the Panama-Pacific World Exposition on the waterfront, which included the Palace of Fine Arts.

Renovation will begin June 9 and continue through November. The attic will be closed during these times.