Louis Blaiotta
Louis Blaiotta, Sr., founder and Chief Executive
Officer of Columbia Elevator Products Co., Inc. is a former member
of NAESA Advisory Board. He has been an active participant in
ANSI/ASME A17 activities since 1963; he served on the Main, Hoistway
and Code Coordinating Committees until 1995, when he was elected
to a Lifetime Honorary Membership on the ANSI Main Committee.
Mr. Blaiotta is a charter member of the ASME/QEI Committee, in
addition to having served as the NAEC Chairman of Codes and Standards
for the past 2 decades. He is a member the International Association
of Elevator Engineers and a former member of the National Fire
Protection Association. In 1991 he received the prestigious NAEC
Distinguished Service Award for his technical and philanthropic
contributions to the elevator industry.
Lou Blaiotta was born to immigrant parents on
Nov.11, 1932 in a cold water flat in East Harlem in New York
City. When he was 22 months old, his mother and expectant brother
both died during childbirth, and, when he was 13, his father
died in a fall while repairing a construction hoist at New York's
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center (an event later commemorated
by the naming of the Columbia Elevator Products Company). He
was raised by his grandmother, who migrated to the U.S. at age
72 when his mother passed.
Between 1949 and 1954, Mr. Blaiotta attended
the Pratt Institute School of Architecture and began his career
as an office boy at the Williamsburg Steel Products Co., later
rising to the position of draftsman. After a 2-year stint with
the Army, he returned to Williamburg in 1956 in various capacities,
including engineering, construction manager, estimating, sales
and a side project designing the Williamsburg Elevator Products
catalog.
In 1958, Mr. Baiotta became sales manager of
the Williamsburg Elevator Products Division. In the mid-60s,
he presented his employers, the Katz family of Williamsburg Steel
Prod. Co., Inc., with a "different" concept of marketing
elevator entrances and cabs to independent elevator contractors,
but the Katzes did not accept it. He gave them 9 months notice
that he wished to pursue his concept on his own. This resulted
in the formation of the Columbia Elevator Products Co., Inc.;
Williamsburg granted the new venture $25,000 worth of merchandise
credit and served as Columbia's primary source of door panels
for the first 8 years of its existence.
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