Wednesday Open Line


Big city hotels as we know them would not be possible without elevators — guests simply would not walk up countless flights of stairs with their luggage. This week in 1859, the first hotel with an elevator opened in New York City, an elegant structure called the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was six stories high. Its elevator did not use cables, but cars carried guests to upper floors atop a solid, screw-like mechanism, called a “vertical screw railway.” The first modern, electric elevator did not come along for another 30 years, also in New York City. Today, making elevators and escalators in the U.S. generates $2.6 billion a year in revenue. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.