AdamH12113 parent
I think the GP is referring to manually operated elevators, in which a human inside the elevator pulls a lever to tell the elevator when to move. When I was a kid, my dad worked in a building with a semi-automated elevator that had floor buttons and an automatic return to the ground floor, but still had the lever. There was an operator inside on weekdays, but if you came in on the weekend you had to operate the elevator yourself.
I worked at a building in San Francisco (589 Howard St) that still was fully manual. You controlled when the elevator stopped, lifted the gate by yourself to get out, the whole works.
There was a safety mechanism where, IIRC, the gate on one of the floors wasn't closed, none of the other floors could call the elevator, so it was a bit of a pain. Even though we were on the top floor, it was pretty rare for anyone to use it.
I think it was in Lima, not many years ago (6? 8?) that I saw in a federal building the elevators were manually operated. They had physically disabled persons in charge of them, so I guess it was a way of integrating some of those jobs.
Still quite common in NYC. There’s a bit of a social distinction between doorman buildings and elevator-man buildings, and some people prefer the latter.