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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“Back in the day” my neighbor Fran Henry, was a waitress in the rotating restaurant On
the top of the El Cortez.
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That must have been quite the experience! I bet she has stories to tell.
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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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That’s great info! To be honest, I never heard of Harry O. I’ll have to check that out. Thanks!
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