This situation held true until the late 19th century, when elevators began to appear in multistory buildings.
The Roman architect Vitruvius reported that Archimedes built his first elevator around 236 B.C.
1743, Louis XV commissioned a lift to link his apartment in Versailles with that of his mistress.
Eighty years later, the painter Thomas Horner and the architect Decimus Burton collaborated on an "ascending room" that hoisted visitors to a 37-meter-high platform
1853, when Elisha Graves Otis demonstrated his "safety elevator," featuring the first fail-safe means of arresting the elevator's fall should a support rope fail.
1857 Otis installed the first public elevator in a five-story department store in New York, and in 1861 he patented an elevator powered by steam
Hydraulic and electric elevators eventually followed, finally obviating the need to climb endless flights of stairs in tall buildings.
This kind of ponderous and expensive structure simply wouldn't do if tall buildings were to become cost-effective. Fortunately, a new building material - steel - solved this problem just in time
By the late 1890s, the historic confluence of high real estate prices, the safety elevator and the introduction of the steel skeleton frame set off a national boom in erecting tall buildings. The age of skyscraper building had begun.