(soft piano music) - [Narrator] They're the first thing you notice when you walk into the building.

- They're a focal part of the whole arrival experience of the hotel.

- People stop and they look up and they're the first thing that catches your eye.

- [Narrator] These three chandeliers grace the lobby of the Omni William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh.

- So these are some original photos of the groundbreaking of the hotel- - [Narrator] Bob Page knows a lot about the history of this iconic structure.

- [Bob] As you can see, there was a crowd gathered- - [Narrator] It was built by Henry Clay Frick and opened in 1916.

- The hotel was actually built in two different stages.

That's the shot of the front of the hotel from William Penn Way.

In 1929 they added the Grand Street annex onto the hotel.

When the hotel opened originally, it was a thousand guest rooms.

When the Grand Street side was added, it became 1,600 guest rooms, so that was the largest hotel from Chicago to the East Coast and all the way down to Florida during that time.

(soft orchestral music) - [Narrator] Every American president from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama has been here.

- [Bob] We've had a lot of people from the entertainment business.

Count Basie actually recorded an album here.

Cecil B. DeMille premiered a movie on the 17th floor.

Lawrence Welk actually got his start here.

So we have Lawrence Welk's original bubble machine.

- [Narrator] Bob Hope reportedly proposed to his wife Delores at the William Penn.

- Delores, Reade at the time, used to sing here with one of the big bands when Bob Hope was dating her.

- [Narrator] There's now a room named for the couple.

Over the years the number of guest rooms was reduced to about 600 as renovations made them larger and as businesses moved in.

Among other changes, those famous chandeliers.

They were added in the 1950s, replacing older ones that hung for decades.

- [Bob] They came to us from a casino in Cannes, France.

They're called Maria Theresa chandeliers.

The were named after Maria Theresa, the empress of Austria.

She ruled Austria from 1740 to 1780, and that's how they adopted her name because of her love for them.

- [Narrator] The hotel guests love them, too.

- [Bob] You know, each of those chandeliers is 12 feet high, they're eight feet wide.

There's one thousand seven hundred and forty-six individual crystal prisms on each one and there's 84 light bulbs on each one, but they're quite beautiful.

- [Narrator] And to make sure they stay that way, every year they're lowered to the floor for cleaning.

It's become a social event.

- Don't you love the architecture, guys?

- [Child] Yeah, it's really cool.

- They weigh about 500 pounds each, and they're lowered down by hand crank up in the ceiling, which is in a crawl space above each chandelier, and it takes 386 turns of that crank to get it down to lobby level and then again back up to the ceiling level.

- [Narrator] Stephen Monticone's job is to make sure the chandeliers get through their up and down journey safely.

- It's always a little nerve-wracking.

You're crawling above the ceiling of the main lobby, which is plaster, and it's almost irreplaceable if you damage something, so where you crawl and walk is very important to pay attention to your feet.

Once you get to the cranks and the wenches it's important to communicate down below, making sure they're not spinning, they're not bouncing, we don't wanna damage the chandelier.

- [Narrator] And neither do the people who clean them.

Kim Sakanich selects only a few members of her housekeeping staff of more than 90.

- I hand-pick the ladies.

They're my best room attendants.

It's something that I take great pride in and they take pride in, and we dress them up in tuxedos.

That's normally not what they wear every day, but it's obviously a special occasion.

Let's take a look at your work.

These guys did a great job.

- It's my second year doing chandeliers.

Like, the whole hotel is just amazing, the chandeliers.

And I'm just thankful for them picking me every year.

- [Narrator] The team uses a surprisingly simple solution of glass cleaner and water to clean the crystals.

- Just so it's not that harsh on the crystals.

And every single crystal has to be hand-cleaned.

Some of them come off every now and again, but we have a great engineering team and a lot of wire.

That's we have the tablecloths underneath so in case they fall down, they'll have a little softer landing so they don't break.

14 years that I've been here we've never broke a crystal.

(soft piano music) - I just noticed that their initials are in the ceiling.

- [Narrator] Tatiana Brower heard about the cleaning day and surprised her two children with a visit to the hotel.

- We decided that our kids like things that are a little bit quirky and different, and this year a nice meal out and the cool adventure of seeing some crystal chandeliers coming down to ground level.

And so we thought it'd be kind of a cool memory.

- She didn't tell us until we got here Yeah, by the time we walked in I was like, "Oh, that's really nice, "really cool."

- I knew we were going to a restaurant, but I had no idea where.

They're really pretty.

- [Narrator] It's now late afternoon.

All of the chandeliers have been cleaned and examined.

But before the last one is lifted to the ceiling, one final white glove inspection of the grand lights in the lobby.

- They're anything on there, no?

Did they pass?

Fantastic.

(crowd cheers) All right, we're gonna raise a toast to our housekeeping staff and thank them for their efforts today.

Ladies, great job, thank you.

- [Crowd] Cheers.

- Cheers.

So we'll raise the chandelier back up, and it won't be back down again for another year, but we thank you for joining us.

Please enjoy the champagne.

We hope that these chandeliers continue to hang from the ceiling for generations.

20, 30, 40 years from now when somebody's coming into the hotel, we want them to still be hanging there and for that sense of arrival to still exist.