Elevators became common in American cities during the 1870s and 1880s, roughly two decades after the first commercial passenger elevator was installed in 1857. By the 1890s, elevator-equipped office buildings were reshaping city skylines, and by the early 1900s, elevators were a standard feature in tall commercial and residential buildings across the industrialized world. The path from novelty to necessity took about 50 years and required several leaps in technology and public trust.
The Safety Problem That Held Everything Back
Hoisting platforms existed long before anyone would willingly ride one. Freight lifts powered by steam or water were used in factories and warehouses by the 1840s, but the cables snapped often enough that no one considered them safe for people. The fundamental barrier wasn’t mechanical power. It was fear.
Elisha Otis changed that with a dramatic stunt in 1854. At the Crystal Palace Exposition in New York, he rode an elevator partway up an open-sided shaft, then had someone cut the hoisting cable with an axe. The platform held fast, caught by his new spring-loaded safety brake. It was pure showmanship, but it worked. Otis sold eight elevators that year and fifteen the next, almost all for freight use. The seed was planted, but adoption was slow: it took three more years before anyone installed a passenger elevator in a real building.
The First Passenger Elevator: 1857
In 1857, Otis installed the world’s first commercial passenger elevator in the E.V. Haughwout Building, a five-story department store in New York City. It was powered by a steam engine in the basement, traveled at roughly half a foot per second, and cost $300. The building was under eighty feet tall, so the elevator wasn’t strictly necessary. The owner, Eder V. Haughwout, correctly bet that the novelty would draw curious customers through the doors. His clientele included Mary Todd Lincoln.
This first installation was more of a marketing gimmick than a practical solution. Five stories were easily walkable. But it proved the concept: a paying public would step into an elevator if they trusted it wouldn’t kill them.
The 1870s and 1880s: Elevators Transform Cities
The real turning point came when builders realized elevators didn’t just make tall buildings convenient. They made tall buildings profitable. Before elevators, the upper floors of any building were the least desirable, hardest to rent, and often left empty. Elevators flipped that logic, turning rooftops into penthouses and upper-floor offices into premium real estate.
Through the 1870s, hydraulic elevators (powered by water pressure) became reliable enough for widespread commercial use. They were smoother and faster than the old steam-powered models. Cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia began constructing buildings that would have been impractical a decade earlier. By the 1880s, photographs of lower Manhattan show a telling split: dense blocks of four- and five-story brick walk-ups packed the foreground, while a new skyline of ten-story elevator office buildings rose along Broadway. The Tribune Building, at eleven stories, became the first tall building on Newspaper Row across from City Hall. None of these structures would have existed without elevators.
This decade is when elevators crossed from novelty to expectation. Any serious commercial building over five or six stories included one. The technology was no longer remarkable; it was required.
Electric Elevators Speed Things Up
The next major shift came around 1889, when Frank Sprague adapted electric motor technology for elevator use. Electric elevators could carry heavier loads and move faster than their hydraulic or steam predecessors. They also didn’t require massive basement machinery or underground water tanks, which made them cheaper to install in a wider range of buildings.
Electric power removed the practical ceiling on building height. Hydraulic elevators had worked well for ten or twelve stories, but taller buildings needed something more powerful and flexible. By the mid-1890s, electric elevators were the industry standard for new construction. The skyscraper race that defined the early 1900s, from the Flatiron Building to the Woolworth Building, was built on electric elevator technology.
Residential Buildings and Wider Adoption
While office towers adopted elevators first, residential buildings followed by the 1890s and early 1900s. Luxury apartment buildings in cities like New York and Chicago included elevators as a selling point, and the concept of the high-rise apartment became viable. For middle-class housing, elevators took longer to arrive. Most people still lived in low-rise buildings through the first half of the twentieth century, and elevators in smaller apartment buildings didn’t become routine until the postwar construction boom of the 1950s and 1960s.
From Operators to Push Buttons
For most of their early history, elevators required a human operator. A trained attendant opened and closed the doors, controlled the speed, and stopped at the correct floor. This was partly a technical limitation and partly a comfort measure: passengers were uneasy riding alone in a metal box.
The shift to automation happened gradually. Push buttons were introduced in 1892, but they didn’t replace operators overnight. Electronic signal control arrived in 1924, and automatic doors followed in 1948. The first fully operatorless elevator was installed in 1950 at the Atlantic Refining Building in Dallas. Full automatic control systems weren’t standard until 1962. The transition took decades partly because elevator operators’ unions resisted automation, and partly because the public needed time to feel comfortable pressing a button and riding alone. By the late 1960s, though, the staffed elevator was essentially gone from everyday life.
The Timeline at a Glance
- 1854: Otis demonstrates the safety brake at the Crystal Palace Exposition
- 1857: First commercial passenger elevator installed in New York
- 1870s–1880s: Elevators become standard in tall commercial buildings
- 1889: Electric elevators arrive, enabling taller buildings and faster rides
- 1890s–1900s: Elevators appear in luxury residential buildings
- 1950s–1960s: Automatic, operatorless elevators replace human-operated ones
So the short answer depends on what you mean by “common.” Elevators were common in tall office buildings by the 1880s, common in urban residential buildings by the early 1900s, and common in the fully modern, push-button sense most people picture today by the 1960s.