You probably don't think twice when stepping into an elevator. It's just there, ready to whisk you up to your hotel room on the 30th floor of a Vegas casino or down to the underground parking garage.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. An elevator operator at the Commodore condominiums takes a resident of the 95-year-old building to her unit. History lost.

The types of elevators a community has used in its history can tell you something about its fascination with upward mobility. In the 19th century in Schuylkill County, the industrial revolution ...