When passenger lifts were made, they fundamentally changed the ways in which buildings, cities and communities were built, in more ways than the most obvious.

Whilst obviously, a lift shaft makes a taller building more accessible and therefore is as much of an enabling factor for the creation of the skyscraper as reinforced concrete, wrought iron, steel girders and the glass curtain, it fundamentally changed how we perceive height in buildings.

Tall buildings existed before the lift to a degree, but typically rooms and apartments on higher floors were treated as far less valuable and luxurious than the ones on the bottom floor.

Rather than penthouse apartments, the top floor of a tall building in the past would be more like a garret, a type of loft conversion found at the very top of the stairs, often featured sloped ceilings and was considered to be by far the least luxurious and prestigious rooms, second only to living on the street.

This was particularly common in the French Second Empire of the mid-19th century, as the different floors of larger Parisian buildings were quite strictly separated by class, and the higher up the stairs you lived, the lower your social status.

The garret, far from being a penthouse apartment, was treated as a nesting ground for starving artists and poets who essentially lived within the walls in leaky apartments, sharing space with birds and vermin.

The lift’s widespread adoption in the latter part of the 19th century changed all of that, particularly given that in the early days of the concept it was treated not only as a convenient way to travel between floors but a luxury feature in its own right.

That helped change the perception of the different floors of a building completely upside down, and to this day, the more time you spend in a lift getting to your floor, the more luxurious and valuable the destination is believed to be.