Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator

Before skyscrapers forever transformed the landscape of the modern metropolis, the conveyance that made them possible had to be created. Invented in New York in the 1850s, the elevator became an urban fact of life on both sides of the Atlantic by the early twentieth century. While it may at first glance seem a modest innovation, it had wide-ranging effects, from fundamentally restructuring building design to reinforcing social class hierarchies by moving luxury apartments to upper levels, previously the domain of the lower classes. The cramped elevator cabin itself served as a reflection of life in modern growing cities, as a space of simultaneous intimacy and anonymity, constantly in motion. In this elegant and fascinating book, Andreas Bernard explores how the appearance of this new element changed notions of verticality and urban space. Transforming such landmarks as the Waldorf-Astoria and Ritz Tower in New York, he traces how the elevator quickly took hold in large American cities while gaining much slower acceptance in European cities like Paris and Berlin. Combining technological and architectural history with the literary and cinematic, Bernard opens up new ways of looking at the elevator--as a secular confessional when stalled between floors or as a recurring space in which couples fall in love. Rising upwards through modernity, Lifted takes the reader on a compelling ride through the history of the elevator.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION The History of Technology: New York, 1854 Inventing the Multistory Building Accidents THE BREACH THROUGH THE BUILDING: Organizing the Vertical A Theory of the Elevator Shaft Architectures of LinearityThe Void between Floors FROM ATTIC TO PENTHOUSE: The Vertical Hierarchy of Buildings Grand Hotels Garret Rooms, 1839: Poor Poets and Eloping Couples The Hygienists' Battle against the Tenement House The Semantics of the Attic around the Fin de Siecle Penthouses, Roof Gardens, and the Executive Suite CONTROLS The Elevator Operator at the Turn of the Century Push-Button Controls and the Path to Self-Operated Elevators A Brief Psychology of the Push Button INTERIORS The Stairwell The Assimilation of the Elevator Cab Urbanization and Spatial Fear: The Cab and Claustrophobia The Politics of the Elevator The Elevator in Literature, Film, and Advertising NotesBibliography About the Author About the Translator

About the Author :
Andreas Bernard is editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany's largest daily newspaper. He received his Ph.D. in Cultural Sciences from the Bauhaus University Weimar, and teaches cultural studies in Berlin and Lucerne, Switzerland.

Review :
"Lifted is a well-informed and engaging cultural history. What's more, Bernard manages to dissect processes that have shaped the transistion from the 19th century to the 20th, illustrating the elusive phenomenon of "modernity". After reading this study, it becomes at least temporarily impossible to use a lift without a brief contemplation of what it may particularly signify in the here and now." - Times Higher Education "Bernard's passion for research is as impressive as the ease with which he - elevator-like - moves between the disciplines of literature, art history, sociology, and psychology."-Der Spiegel "The elevator, which today seems so boring, was once a vehicle of change of compelling power. Whoever reads this book will view the world's elevators with different eyes."-Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "The elevator did more than make New York the city of skyscrapers, it changed the way we live, as German newspaper editor Andreas Bernard explains in Lifted." - New York Post "This scholarly work celebrates the emergence of an invention we all take for granted." - Cincinnati Magazine "Andreas Bernard, a German newspaper editor, has written a history of the now-ubiquitous lift. Elevators made tall buildings, and thus modern urban life, possible. Upper floors became prestige laden places with desirable views, rather than wearisomely inaccessible attics. Garrets for the destitute gave way to penthouses for plutocrats... the anecdotes and insights are captivating." - The Economist "In a new book, Lifted, German journalist and cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard zeroes in on this experience, tracing mankind's relationship to the elevator back to its origins and finding that it has never been a totally comfortable one. 'After 150 years, we are still not used to it,' Bernard said. 'We still have not exactly learned to cope with this...mixture of intimacy and anonymity.' That mixture, according to Bernard, sets the elevator ride apart from just about every other situation we find ourselves in as we go about our lives." - Boston Globe "We live, in short, in the world that elevators made, and Lifted is a sharp-eyed, readable exploration of its making." - Pop Matters "Bernard writes from a refreshingly European (and specifically German) perspective even if North America, and in particular, Manhattan, emerges as a key locus...amusingly obsessive, impressively erudite." - Times Literary Supplement "Bernard's exploration of the development and wider cultural impact of the lift - moving from hierarchies within the building to the controls - is most striking...Lifted is a well-informed and engaging cultural history." - Times Higher Education "A hugely atmospheric portrait of central European tenements and apartment buildings [...] it crackles with imaginative energy and is full of bright and memorable scenes. It is an excellent architectural history, a magical and valuable example of the work that can be produced within the discipline." - Icon Magazine