" For 3,000 years the most sought-after rooms were on the first floor—or the second floor if you’re an American. The piano nobile, the grand first floor, was for animals or the shop. One flight up was the master bedroom and reception rooms, and the further up you went, the lower your status. Scullery maids roosted like swallows in the eaves. But the lift brought us to the penthouse to live with the angels, the glass walls, the silent buffet of the wind, the hiss of climate control. And beneath the great, blinking panorama of the city, wall evaporated into air. No art or bookshelf could compete with the view of omnipotence, the sense of living on Parnassus, a double-glazed Valhalla. And a view suddenly had a value—real estate agents could sell something they didn’t own. "

― A.A. Gill , To America with Love