Riding the world’s first outdoor glass elevator!

If you’re familiar with the history of the El Cortez in downtown San Diego, you probably know it featured the world’s very first outdoor glass elevator. (Although I’ve also seen information that says it was the first such elevator in the United States, second in the world.)

Based on an idea suggested by a hotel bellboy, an outdoor glass elevator, called the Starlight Express, was installed in 1956 on the side of the El Cortez Hotel, then the highest building in San Diego. People from all around Southern California would converge on the elegant hotel to be swept dizzily skyward to the chic Starlight Room restaurant on the twelfth floor.

Today I came across a black and white 1956 newsreel that has been released by Universal City Studios into the public domain. It shows thrilled passengers going up and down what was then the brand new, incredible, jaw-dropping Starlight Express!

Check out the “futuristic” costume (uniform?) of the smiling elevator operator! And check out how downtown San Diego appeared in the 1950s. A bit different than today, right?

I snipped sequential images from the old newsreel so you can enjoy a fun look!

By the way, the El Cortez Hotel also featured the world’s first moving sidewalk! You know–the sort of thing you might stand on in an airport terminal or at an amusement park. It was called the Travolator. Both the Starlight Express and Travolator were removed many years ago.

Read much more about the El Cortez and its extraordinary history in this detailed Wikipedia article. Among other things, you’ll learn how this Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style landmark was built on property once owned by a son of President Ulysses S. Grant, how a third of San Diego’s population showed up for the hotel’s opening day, and how it had an anti-aircraft battery on its roof during World War II!

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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

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Richard Schulte

Downtown San Diego has been my home for many years. My online activities reflect my love for writing, blogging, walking and photography.

6 thoughts on “Riding the world’s first outdoor glass elevator!”

  2. The El Cortez elevator is featured in an episode of the old TV show “Harry O” which starred David Janssen. The show ran from 1973 to 1976. You can see the old “Starlite Roof Express” elevator in action in color in the opening scene of the “Harry O” episode called “Material Witness” (season 1, episode 10). Anyway, I lived in SD from 1989 to 1992 for work, and always loved the downtown area. My wife and I own the “Harry O” show on DVD and the first season was filmed in and around SD. So we spend a lot of time looking up the various locations we see in that show. There are still a lot of landmarks in 2026 around San Diego that you can see in the old “Harry O” show if you look closely. If you like finding filming locations on Google Earth as much as we do, have your iPad handy when you watch “Harry O”. Btw, the second season was filmed mostly in LA, but it is still fun to look up old locations for that season too. There are a ton of sites online that do the work for you… they hunt down and compare (new to old) filming locations for movies and TV shows from around the world. So you can probably look up “Harry O filming locations” online and see the season one El Cortez elevator scene without having to even stream the show (or buy the dvd’s like we do).

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      1. Sorry for the late reply Richard, I don’t check my email often these days… life has gotten busy since the warm Spring weather arrived here. Anyway, I hope you can find “Harry O” on some streaming service. It’s a fun watch if you like the ‘gritty detective’ genre. Most people know of David Janssen as the original “Fugitive” in the ’60’s – long before Harrison Ford made that story-line famous as a big Hollywood movie. Yet, the “Harry O” series showed a different side of Janssen from his “Fugitive” fame, and is a good watch especially if you love seeing San Diego as a filming backdrop. Speaking of San Diego as a filming backdrop, as I mentioned before, I lived in SD for 3 years (mostly in OB). And I was lucky enough to be an extra in a made-for-TV-film that was shot in downtown SD. The film is called “Are You Lonesome Tonight” and stars Parker Stevenson and Jane Seymour. I played a young detective (with no speaking parts). Of course, my scenes only made it as far as the cutting-room floor from what I can tell (I own the movie on VHS) lol. Anyway, here is the IMDB link for that movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103717/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_accord_2_cdt_t_103 Now, somewhere I have a bunch of color photos of being on the set and at the filming location near SeaPort Village. I believe the filming location was at 789 W Harbor Drive in the building that now houses “Eddie V’s”. Of course, I’m only going by memory, and this was nearly 35 years ago. I do however have a semi-eidetic/semi-photographic memory. So, I am pretty sure that the film was shot at that location around the Autumn time frame of 1991. I did get onto Google Earth for a sec just now to look around in that area to recall where that part of the movie was filmed. It wasn’t difficult since my side-hustle at the time was moonlighting at The Old Spaghetti Factory in the Gaslamp Quarter – so I used to spend a lot of time walking around that whole area down there. Anyway, if I could find those photos, I could digitize them for you if you wanted to do an article on that tiny bit of SD film-location history. Btw, do you know the history of that building at 789 W Harbor Dr? It’s a wonderful piece of architecture. I would love to see a blog just on that building, nevermind the movie itself. lol -Mark

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