Last week, I was scouting office space in a building in Queens. My guide brought me to this totally unassuming elevator:

Really, I have to show you this as I encountered it:

WOW. It’s like Willy Wonka built an elevator to the land of Oz! Easily the coolest elevator I’ve ever been on in New York:

Here’s a full panorama looking toward the rear of the elevator (that’s a railing beneath the mirror)…

…and a reverse pan showing the front:

Lining the ceiling are these great monster heads made out of mechanical bits…

Each is poking through its own hole:

More characters, including a king:

Another character:

The elevator is a last remnant from when the former Macy’s warehouse building catered to a more artsy clientele. In fact, the entire lobby was once decked out in matching accoutrements, most of which have been removed as part of a conversion to more traditional office space. Thankfully, the new owners decided to keep the unusual elevator in the back corner.

Best of all, there’s a cool fish-eye mirror at one end, which makes it look like you’re leaning out of some parallel dimension:

I’m a big fan of anything that makes my day a little more surreal, and this is the last thing I was expecting on the other side of those bland white elevator doors. If anyone knows who the artist was, please let me know!

-SCOUT

PS – One other installation was left in the lobby – a school bus, apparently paused in the midst of an avant-garde crash:

Not sure if this hand is causing the accident or saving it…

But it’s probably a safe bet you don’t want to be in either of these seats!

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