Elevators, though they might not seem like it at first, are one of those inventions-like the telephone, the car, indoor plumbing, or vaccines-that are nearly miraculous in the degree to which they have changed the way we live and yet tend to fade unnoticed into the background of modern life. Nick Paumgarten wrote about the centrality of the elevator to the modern metropolis in his 2008 story ” Up and Then Down .”