Tools of the trade: How escalators helped retail move up

There are devices in the retail world we take for granted. Let’s stop doing that.

Escalator

• Patented: 1859
• First patent holder: Nathan Ames

One small step: It took a while for the escalator to start ascending.

In 1859, Nathan Ames, of Saugus, Massachusetts, filed a patent for what he called “revolving stairs,” with illustrations that are recognizably an escalator, but he never built one—and the idea languished for decades.

In 1892, engineer Jesse Reno revived the idea, securing a patent for his “inclined elevator.” Rather than articulated stairs, it was essentially a conveyor belt—like a big treadmill—that went from floor to floor. It made its debut on Coney Island in 1896, where, in a two-week demonstration, about 75,000 people rode the contraption.

It ascended seven feet.

The first device built with steps debuted at the 1900 Paris Exposition, brought to life by a team that included the Otis Elevator Company. It was the first time the device was called an escalator—its etymology uncertain but possibly based on the French word escalade, which means "climbing," with Otis tacking on the last two syllables from its beloved elevator.

Otis trademarked “escalator” in 1900, but the US Patent and Trademark Office canceled the trademark in 1950, ruling the term had become generic—a case of what legal circles darkly call genericide.

Up-scale shopping: Retailers bought in early.

• When London’s Harrods first began operating escalators in 1898, staff reportedly awaited shoppers with smelling salts and cognac to help steady nerves.
• New York’s Bloomingdale’s installed escalators in 1898 and Macy’s in 1902.
• Paris’s Bon Marché did so in 1906.

So ubiquitous are escalators in department stores today, that it may be hard to conjure how revolutionary they were at the time.

In an excerpt from the book A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects, which ran in Smithsonian Magazine in 2019, Megan Carpenter wrote the escalator “is among the most important innovations in retail marketing” because of its impact on shopping.

Elevators preceded escalators in stores, but moved only a limited number of people, while stairs took effort, especially huffing it to upper floors.

“But the moving staircase democratizes all levels; upper floors become indistinguishable from lower,” Carpenter continued. “Retail traffic flows seamlessly between levels, so that the consumers can access higher floors with little more effort than entering on the first floor.”

• Today, there are about 56,000 escalators in North America, according to National Elevator Industry Inc., a trade group.

Watch your step. Much as escalators are heralded as a solution, for at least one retail brand, they’ve been a problem.

Many news reports detail incidents of children’s Crocs getting caught in escalators, causing serious injuries. Parents have sued the company for millions (one law firm alone told Quartz in 2012, it had handled 20 suits against Crocs for escalator injuries), and Crocs has reportedly settled many of those cases.

Crocs told Quartz, “There is no evidence Crocs’ shoes are more likely to become entrapped in escalators than other soft-soled shoes.”Since 2009, however, it has issued a warning about escalators on the shoes’ hang tags.

Flights of fancy. Like audiophiles embracing vinyl in the Spotify era, some retailers make oppositional statements with boldly designed staircases.

• An Axel Agiato flagship store that opened in Copenhagen in 2019 features a staircase with stunning concrete asymmetrical steps.
• The six flights of spiral staircases that dramatically fuse gleaming black-and-white marble in a Dolce & Gabbana boutique in London won a Wallpaper design award in 2018.
• A white spiral staircase is the centerpiece of Barney’s 2016 redesign of its flagship New York store.

Public health advocates, meanwhile, would like us to take the stairs to burn calories.

In a study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion in 2007, researchers placed messages such as “7 Minutes of Stair Climbing Daily Protects Your Heart” near a stairway at a UK mall, resulting in a 161% increase of shoppers opting for stairs instead of escalators.

Stepping back. At the Macy’s in New York’s Herald Square, there are some Otis escalators made of wood—oak and ash—that date back as far as 1920.

Videos of them on YouTube often include no narration, just these relics’ oddly mesmerizing clickety-clack and creak. The views are in the millions and, like the escalators themselves, they just keep going up, and up, and up.—AAN