In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

ELEVATORS
Three days before the championship fight between Jack Dempsey and
Gene Tunney, and anticipating the arrival of "a host of pickpockets and
other underworld characters" in Philadelphia [see Boxing], a detective
bureau issues "a list of Don'ts in warning to the visiting fans." Some of
these warnings are published in the New York Times on September 21.
While it comes as no surprise that the bureau advises visitors not to
"make friends with strangers," and not to leave valuables in automobiles
or in hotel rooms, at least one of the rules raises a question: "Be particularly
careful in elevators, as these are common places for persons to have
pockets picked." Wouldn't an elevator, which prohibits escape immediately
after a theft, offer a difficult strategic situation for a pickpocket?
What possibilities for becoming invisible, if any, does a thief have in an
elevator? In the collective imagination, elevators set the pace for the
traffic within modern buildings, whose gigantic dimensions define them
as complex, self-contained worlds. An oft-cited paradigm is the state-ofthe-art
hotel. Announcing its reopening after a complete renovation,
Berlin's Hotel Excelsior, "the largest hotel on the Continent," proudly
features a veritable system of elevators: "Six elevators regulate the traffic
to the different floors day and night" (8 Uhr-Abendblatt, October 2).
What would perhaps provide refuge for a thief fleeing one of these six
elevators with a stolen purse is the anonymity and incessant rhythm of
the hotel space. He could hope to be swallowed up by such complexity.
Not only do the elevators circulate "day and night," but the pervasive
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