The Electric
Elevator, the Skyscraper and Elevator Music
by John
Vardalas
It was 125 years ago, in
1880, when Werner von Siemens demonstrated the first electric
powered elevator at the Mannheim Pfalzgau exhibition. This one piece
in the ever increasing electrification and technological advancement
of the late 19th century allows us to make a point about the
interrelationship between different technologies, because the
electric elevator brought about changes not just in traction, but in
architecture and in sound engineering.
While electric traction
was new, the elevator was not. The use of hoists to lift material in
mines, construction sites, warehouses, etc., had been around for
centuries. It had also been common practice for workers to jump on
the hoists lifting the material, albeit an extremely hazardous one. The
first elevators designed expressly for passenger use were only
introduced in the 1850s. In 1854, in a dramatic demonstration at the
New York Crystal Palace Exhibition, Elisha Graves Otis demonstrated
the first “safety elevator.” With the elevator set up in a prominent
part of the exhibition hall, he stood on the elevator platform as it
was raised four stories. He then had the suspension rope cut. The
audience gasped, but the platform did not hurtle to the ground.
Instead it stood locked and safely suspended above the ground. Four
years later in 1857, Otis installed the first passenger elevator in
E.V. Haughwout & Co., a store located on Broadway.
Powered by a steam engine, the elevator at Haughwout was the talk of
the city, as thousands of curious visitors flocked to the store.
With a motor mounted on
the bottom of the cab, Siemens’ electric elevator used a gearing
system to climb wall shafts fitted with racks. Although novel, this
electric elevator was still too crude to compete with the existing
steam-driven, hydraulic elevator technology. Intended simply as an
illustration broad applicability of his pioneering work in D.C.
traction motors, Siemens had little interest in pursuing the
electric elevator further. Siemens instead focused on large projects,
such as electric trains and electric power systems. Two decades
later, the U.S. firm founded by Otis, Otis Brothers & Co.,
established electric power as the paradigm in elevator design and,
in so doing, unleashed a dramatic change in the architectural
landscape of large cities in the United States.
The skyscraper was an
American creation. A culture of experimentation, self-confidence,
and pride, along with rising land prices led America’s large urban
centers to look to the value of ever-taller office buildings. In the
latter part of the 19th century, this desire for taller edifices,
however, faced two technological obstacles: the limitations of
load-bearing walls and the problem of moving people between the
floors. Standard practice had been to use walls to supply the
structural support for a building. Since the wall’s thickness would
have to grow in proportion to the building’s height, anything over
10 floors became unrealistic. The introduction of load-bearing steel
frame structures meant architects were no longer constrained by
those limitations.
But even if taller building could be erected safely and economically,
they would have been of little use if people could not move quickly
and safely between floors. Steel-framed construction and elevator
technology thus fed off of each other. By the close of the 19th
century, architects' ambitions of to
erect buildings more than 20 stories tall were blocked by the limitations of
existing hydraulic elevator technology. The electric motor changed
that.
In retrospect,
the electrical elevator was critical to the birth of the skyscraper,
but
acceptance of the electrical option did not occur overnight.
Electricity was a new technology and a source of
both fear and wonderment. Electricity was an unseen force that moved
along slender wires. It could magically light a room or street — but
it could also kill. The intense and often bitter debates that raged
between the proponents of AC and DC surely did not help to sooth the
public’s concerns. Fear of electrical energy was bad enough, but
anxieties were ratcheted up considerably more when coupled with the
thought of being suspended in an elevator 20 or more stories above
the ground. Like electricity, tall buildings were also a source of
fear and wonderment. Considerable progress was needed before
electricity could be used and accepted in elevators. It took several
decades to move from Siemens’ slow, rickety demonstration elevator
to one that could move people swiftly and safely up above 20 stories.
The breakthrough came in
1902, when the Otis Elevator Co., after a costly R&D effort,
pioneered the gearless, traction electric elevator. The innovation
was an ingenious combination of electrical and mechanical
subsystems. The first system was installed in New York in 1904.
Almost overnight, this new electric elevator rendered the hydraulic
elevator obsolete and opened up a whole new world for architects. From
1906 to 1912, several buildings, 46 stories and taller, went up,
including the Singer building, the Metropolitan Life Tower and the
Woolworth Building. The addition of electro-mechanical
and, later, electronic-switching devices, enabled
gearless
traction electric technology to send buildings soaring even
higher,
bringing us the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.
The success of the
electric elevator also gave us another cultural and technological
phenomenon — elevator music. In his book, Elevator Music: A
Surreal History of Muzak®, Easy-Listening, and OtherMoodsong®,
Joseph Lanza points out that proprietors of tall office buildings
and the various elevator companies were all engaged in a public
relations campaign to mitigate any anxieties people felt about using
elevators. The thought of being carried off swiftly to great heights
and then returned to earth as quickly was unsettling. “All of the
monstrous visions of gargoyle-line skyscrapers (perfected in Fritz
Lang’s 1919 film Metropolis),” writes Lanza, “came to life on 31 May
1931, when New York City unveiled the 102-story Empire State
Building. Music had to be piped into elevators, lobbies and
observatories to give people at least some illusion of continuity
amid disorder.” Soft, comforting and angelic music lulled the
squeamish onboard the elevator. “By injecting ether and eliminating
dross,” observes Lanza, “elevator music became a style whose notes
and harmonies sounded as if they were whipped up with air.”
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