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Why the proliferation of short-travel lifts in early commercial history? It was probably more economical to dig out a basement than erect an upper floor. Then, too, the basement became the machine room for the building. It houses the furnace and the coal as well as the residue ashes. If the building was multistory and required a stem of hydraulic elevator, it was still handy to have a lift between the cellar and the sidewalk. Manufacturer catalogs indicate that sidewalk elevators were big business in the early days of elevatoring. A basement kept unsightly necessities out of the customers' sight and a firm foundation for such machinery as the building required. It was a cool place to store kegs of beer and other perishables in times that knew little of refrigeration. No substitute existed for the sidewalk lift that took merchandise or bulk materials directly to their storerooms. When the floor of the sidewalk lift could be raised to the level of the truck bed, that was the "frosting on the cake"!
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