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Language: en

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The world's first elevator shaft

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was installed four years before
the elevator was invented,

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which sounds ridiculous.

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But inside this building,

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the Cooper Union Foundation Building
in New York City,

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is the world's first elevator shaft,

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the first time a building was constructed

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to have a space for an
elevator top to bottom.

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Because when this was being
designed in the 1850s,

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the architect and owner
looked at New York City

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just starting to sprawl
wider and rise higher

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and they predicted,
"Someone is going to invent

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"a safe passenger elevator soon."

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Four years later, Elisha Otis
did just that.

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But that prediction wasn't quite perfect.

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- I think the remarkable thing
about the Foundation Building

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is that Peter Cooper first recognised
that he needed to build a building,

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and then that he would figure out
what he wanted to do with it.

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There were principles
that he was committed to.

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One was free education to the
working-class people of New York.

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He established a free reading room
before there were public libraries;

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also, the largest interior space
in New York City in which to hold

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lectures and debates, also open for free
to the general public.

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Peter Cooper's vision was both for a very
radical, progressive institution,

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but he wanted embedded in the building
radical new technologies and ideas.

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So, by this time, by 1850,

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New York City was still really, really
crowded and dense.

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But the grid of Manhattan
had already been laid out.

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The Manhattan grid was
established in 1811,

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so everyone in New York City understood
that New York City was going to grow,

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and it was growing, in the middle
of the century, exponentially.

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In fact, the population of
Manhattan would peak in 1910,

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and we still have not reached the density

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and the high population that
the city had at that time.

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So, Peter Cooper knew that the city
had to be able to grow outward,

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but it also had to be able to grow upward.

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And so, he knew the elevator was coming.

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At the same time, Elisha Otis,

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who we all know from the
Otis Elevator Company,

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was busy working on not
inventing an elevator,

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because the elevator had
been in use for centuries

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to move equipment, to move goods.

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What Otis understood was that elevators

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would never be used for
people until they were safe.

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So, what he was working on doing
is to invent the safety elevator.

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That's happening in 1855.

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The Foundation Building
meanwhile is under construction.

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So, Peter Cooper knew this was coming.

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The only thing nobody knew

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was what would be the
shape of the elevator cab,

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and Peter Cooper bet on circular.

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Since it's the most efficient way,
spatially,

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to put the most number of
people in the smaller shaft

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and to carry them vertically.

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Little did he know that
that was not going to be

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the conventional elevator cab shape.

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And so, this was the first elevator shaft
that was constructed, we think, worldwide,

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certainly in the city,

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but it was not the first
functioning elevator.

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And the elevator cab that was
ultimately put in this shaft was square,

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so it was literally a
square peg in a round hole.

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The building was renovated, really,
from top to bottom on the inside in 1975.

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The architect, John Hejduk,
makes sure that the round shaft

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is really floating in the space.

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And the other thing he does is
he makes a companion elevator

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diagonally across the floor,
which is a square elevator.

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Always thought that
that was a beautiful way

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to allow architecture
to speak across time.

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Peter Cooper's intuition
that the shape would be round

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was not what the market
would carry forward.

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When you're thinking ahead of your time,

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sometimes you will guess correctly
and sometimes you won't.

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But taking the risk to
actually invent something new

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and to build it into a building, I think,

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is really an innovative idea.

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- Is it worth the risk of
making that sort of prediction

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when it is basically just a gamble?

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Given what hassle a round
elevator shaft turned out to be,

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was it worth it?
Or would it have been better to wait

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and then retrofit a
regular elevator in later,

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like every other building from that era?

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And here's a bigger question:

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What should we be designing for now?

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Not just in buildings, but anywhere.

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What's the thing that
is going to seem obvious

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in 20 or 30 years but no
one can see coming now?

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I don't know.
Maybe you do.