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The Fenelon Place Elevator is also known as the 4th Street Elevator and the world’s shortest,
steepest, scenic railway - 296 feet in length. Provides a
magnificent view of Iowa,
Illinois, and Wisconsin.
History
In 1882, Dubuque was an hour and a half town - at noon everything shut down
for an hour and a half when everyone went home to dinner.
Mr. J. K. Graves, a former mayor, former State Senator, also promoter of
mines and a banker lived on top of the bluffs and worked at the bottom.
Unfortunately, he had to spend half an hour driving his horse and buggy
round the bluff to get to the top and another half an hour to return
downtown, even though his bank was only two and a half blocks away.
Mr. Graves liked to take half an hour for his dinner, then a half an hour
nap, but this was im-possible because of the long buggy ride.
As a traveler he had seen incline railways in Europe and decided that a
cable car would solve his problem. He petitioned the city for the right to
build. The franchise was granted on June 5, 1882.
John Bell, a local engineer, was hired to design and to build a one-car
cable modeled after those in the Alps.
The original cable car, which was built for Mr. Graves' private use, had
a plain wood building, that housed a coal-fired steam engine boiler and
winch. A wooden Swiss-style car was hauled up and down on two rails by a
hemp rope.
Mr. Graves' cable car operated for the first time on July 25, 1882. After
that, he had his gardener let him down in the morning, bring him up at noon,
down after dinner and nap, and up again at the end of the work day. Before
long, the neighbors began meeting him at the elevator asking for rides.
On July 19, 1884, the elevator burned when the fire that was banked in
the stove for the night was blown alive. After Mr. Graves rebuilt the
elevator, he remembered how his neighbors showed up when he used the cable
car and he decided to open it to the public. He charged five cents a ride.
The elevator burned again in 1893. Because there was a recession Mr.
Graves could not afford to rebuild the cable car. The neighbors had come to
depend on the elevator to get them to work, to church, to school, and to the
market.
Ten neighbors banded together and formed the Fenelon Place Elevator co.
Mr. Graves gave them the franchise for the right of way for the track. This
group traveled to the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, to
look for new ideas. They brought back a streetcar motor to run the elevator,
the turnstile, and steel cable for the cars. They had remembered that each
time the elevator house burned, the fire also burned through the hemp rope
that held the car and sent it crashing down the hill destroying it and the
little house at the bottom. Then they in-stalled three rails with a fourth
bypass in the middle to allow for the operation of two (funicular)
counterbalanced cars.
By 1912, C. B. Trewin, who had built a house next door in 1897, became
the sole stockholder. It was natural for him to buy up the stock from the
original ten stockholders as they either passed away or moved away.
Mr. Trewin added garages to the north and south sides of the operator's
house in 1916. He also added a second floor apartment which the neighborhood
men used for a meeting room where they could smoke and play cards without
the wives interfering.
There was another fire in 1962. That time an electrical fire between the
ceiling of the operator's room and the apartment upstairs brought the
realization that the price had to go up. And it did to ten cents a ride.
In 1977, the cable cars were completely rebuilt. After 84 years the
original gear drive was re-placed by a modern gear box with a DC motor. The
movie F.I.S.T. included a scene that was filmed at the elevator.
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