A closer look
Elevators fundamentally shifted the hierarchy of urban real estate by entirely reversing the social desirability of upper and lower floors in multi-story residential buildings. Before Elisha Otis demonstrated his brilliant safety brake in 1854, wealthy aristocrats heavily preferred the bottom floors so they would not have to climb exhausting flights of stairs, leaving the sweltering, drafty top-floor attics for the poorest servants. The moment mechanical vertical transport became reliable and safe, the rich immediately abandoned the noisy, horse-manure-scented street level and claimed the high-altitude penthouses with their pristine views and fresh air. It is wildly impressive how a simple box hoisted by steel cables managed to completely invert the entire socioeconomic structure of the global housing market in just a few decades. Today, you actively pay a massive premium to live as high up as possible, desperately relying on a metal box to save you from a twenty-story cardiovascular nightmare
