The story of Delaware Elevator covers 90 years, for generations, 500 employees and thousands of elevators — in hotels, hospitals, offices, apartments, museums, dams, embassies, military facilities, and anywhere else people need to go up and down.

The thing about working for an elevator company that’s been hired to modernize the elevator in the Washington Monument is that, due to the very nature of the project, the only way to get to the machine room at the top is to walk. That’s up 897 cold icon steps, in a narrow, windowless staircase that spirals within the 555-foot-high-structure.

Jose Carrasco thought it was great. The stairs have been closed to the public since the 1970s, but when Delaware Elevator Inc. (DEI) got the job to lift the monument’s elevator into the 21st century, Carrasco — the company’s vice president of construction modernization — relished “the opportunity that not many people have to walk the steps.”

Read Vertical Growth