Up for a taste of the local culture

摘要

There could be no high-rises without elevators. What's more, the in- vention of the elevator has turned the social structure of buildings upside down: not so many years ago it was the poor who had to trudge high up to their quarters - often in a cold attic, like Spitzweg's "poor poet" - while the more convenient lower floors were reserved for the master of the house. But then the elevator started about 150 years ago to revolutionize the vertical housing hierarchy. Around 1900, building owners started converting the old domestic quarters into expensive rooms with a view, initially in American hotels and a short time later also in Europe. The old servants' chamber became the penthouse.