Five flights. That was the tenement. Five flights up and five flights down and everything you owned you carried. Groceries. Furniture. Laundry. The stairwell was the highway of the building. One lane. No passing. You met your neighbors on the stairs and the stairs were the only place in the building where everybody went the same way.

The stairwell had an echo. A shout on the first floor arrived on the fifth floor two seconds later. The echo was the building's memory. Every sound the stairwell heard it repeated. The stairwell was the first recording studio. Doo-wop groups sang in stairwells because the echo made four voices sound like eight. The stairwell was the reverb before the reverb existed.

The banister was oak. Dark. Polished by ten thousand hands. The banister got smoother every year because every hand that touched it took something away and left something behind. The banister was the handshake of the building. You grabbed it on the way up and you grabbed it on the way down and the banister did not care which direction you were going.

The super mopped the stairs every morning. The mop and the bucket and the smell of pine. The stairwell smelled like pine and cooking and cigarettes and the perfume of whoever just walked through. The stairwell was the nose of the building. You knew what floor you were on by what you smelled. First floor was garlic. Third floor was laundry. Fifth floor was tar from the roof.

They put in elevators. The elevator is faster. The elevator is easier. The elevator does not smell like anything. The elevator does not echo. The elevator moves you from the lobby to your door and you see nobody and you hear nothing and you arrive alone. The stairwell was a journey. The elevator is a transaction. The stairwell knew everybody's name. The elevator knows everybody's floor.

See also: Tenement, Walk-Up