Angels Flight was built in 1901 to carry Bunker Hill residents up a 99-foot rise on 298 feet of track. Angels Flight was built in 1901 to carry residents of the affluent Bunker Hill neighborhood up and down the steep slope between Hill Street and the top of the hill, a vertical rise of 99 feet over a track length of 298 feet. For a penny you could ride the two funicular cars — Sinai and Olivet, named for biblical mountains — up to a neighborhood of Victorian houses and boarding houses that was the most densely populated hillside community in the city.
By the 1950s, Bunker Hill had declined from affluence to tenement, and the city's urban renewal program demolished the entire neighborhood between 1955 and 1970, replacing Victorian houses with the glass towers of the Bunker Hill financial district you see above you now. Angels Flight was dismantled in 1969, then restored and rebuilt nearby in 1996. It has suffered accidents and closures since, but currently operates again.
Ride it up, the trip takes about a minute, and from the top you can follow Hill Street and the city grid all the way toward the harbor.