Elisha Graves Otis invented the modern elevator, revolutionizing their lives by taking them vertical. March 23, 2017, marked 160 years since Otis installed his inaugural commercial passenger elevator at New York City’s E.V. Haughwout & Co department store on Broadway and Broome Streets with an astounding speed of 40 feet per minute, thus expanding architectural aspirations in our ancestors’ lifetimes.
Otis Elevator Co. (a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp.) boasts that their invention “enabled cities to flourish, revolutionized architecture and created urban centers throughout the globe”.
Otis almost followed through on this plan. Initially he developed his “safety elevator” while employed at Yonkers’ Bedstead Manufacturing Co. when they suddenly went bankrupt; once California gold fever struck he decided to join it instead of returning home; just in time though was when a Yonkers furniture manufacturer called asking for help replacing its elevator after its broken cable had caused two employees to die from being trapped below it; Otis ended up staying put instead and opening his own shop within part of what used to be Bedstead Manufacturing building which had once belonged to Bedstead Manufacturing Company!
Soon after its creation, Otis’ invention catapulted into history at P.T. Barnum’s exhibit at New York City’s Crystal Palace (an imitation of London’s famed structure). Otis demonstrated his breakthrough in elevator safety by riding an 18-foot platform up an open shaft; when at its top Otis cut the hoisting rope and released his special spring device which kept Otis’ platform from falling, proclaiming to the crowd, “All safe, gentlemen! All safe!”
1857 marked just the start. By 1870s more than 2,000 Otis elevators had been placed into service – creating not only tall buildings but also creating the profession of elevator operator. Today Otis elevators move an equivalent population every five days!
City skylines changed with elevators
Along with such innovations as air conditioning and steel framing – first used in Chicago’s 10-story Home Insurance Building in 1885 as its foundation – elevators transformed urban landscapes dramatically. According to author Joseph Kellard, this development dramatically redesigned cityscapes as stately buildings rose higher into the skylines as “stately buildings soaring ever higher were constructed as proud symbols of American ingenuity… No longer did businessmen need large tracts of land before taking flight with their creative thoughts… Instead they turned their eyes towards skyward horizons to take hold of his designs.”
Nowhere did skyscrapers make such an indelible mark on our ancestors’ world as dramatically as on Manhattan Island. Population density increased more than twofold from 1880 to 1910 as inhabitants packed into an ever more vertical city made possible by elevators and steel construction; thousands commuted daily to work places like Equitable Life Building with 42 stories and 1.2 million square feet – then the world’s largest office building at that time; then came the Chrysler Building, famed for its high speed elevators before Empire State Tower eclipsed it until 1972 with 110-story World Trade Center towers rising tall.