Hochhäuser und Wolkenkratzer funktionieren nur mit billiger Elektrizität

The city exploded vertically in a very few decades when Thomas Edison’s combined engineering-and-business genius made it possible to deliver electricity to every block. We’d spent the period just after the Civil War putting up limestone palaces and brick heaps as grand as the ones in Paris and London (and about the same size), and then from about 1890-on we tore them all down when the elevator made it possible to rent hundreds of apartments or office suites on the same real-estate „footprint“ where there used to be only dozens of rentable units.

Quelle: My Hometown and Its Fate – Clusterfuck Nation