A woman has been trapped for three days in the lift of a Manhattan townhouse where she works, while the house’s owners were away for the weekend, officials said.

The woman appeared to be in good condition after she was rescued last Monday, but was taken to a hospital for treatment, Fire Department spokesman James Long said.

He said she had been alone in the elevator since the previous Friday night.

The woman has not been publicly identified by officials.

Firefighters went to the home, a five-storey building on New York’s Upper East Side, just after 10am last Monday, after a call from its owners, Mr Long said. The firefighters forced open the doors of the lift, which was stuck between the house’s second and third floors.

Hugo Martinez, 50, who works next door, said the woman appeared conscious and calm when firefighters removed her from the building on a stretcher.

The home owners, Warren and Harriet Stephens, said in a statement the woman has worked for them for 18 years. They also said a member of their family accompanied her to the hospital, where she was said to be “doing well.”

The elevator had most recently been inspected in July and no violations were filed, according to city records.

New York’s Department of Buildings said it was investigating the incident, though an inspector, Devon Simmons, who knocked on the front door after the rescue was not let into the building.

Mr Simmons said he would need to do tests to determine what led to the elevator’s malfunction. Until he was given access to the building, he said, the home owners would be flagged with a violation. The Department of Buildings issued one later that day, a spokeswoman said.

Mr Simmons did not know whether the elevator had a phone or emergency button. According to the Department of Buildings, buildings that do not have people continuously monitoring them must have buttons or phones in their elevators in case there is an emergency.

“The cause of this unfortunate incident is being investigated,” the Stephens family said in its statement. “Appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that something like this never happens again.”

After Mr Simmons’ visit, a mechanic for lift manufacturer Schindler Elevator walked out of the townhouse and said his company was working to determine the source of the problem.

The Stephens bought their townhouse, near Madison Avenue and down the block from the fine-dining stalwart Daniel, in 1999. The couple spent nearly $8 million on the home, The New York Times reported later that year. The elevator was installed before they purchased the house, which records show was built in 1920.

Warren Stephens, a billionaire investor originally from Arkansas, is chairman and chief executive of an Arkansas investment firm that also has an office in New York. In 2018, Forbes, which ranked him 302nd on its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, estimated his net worth at $US2.7 billion ($3.8 billion).

In 1999, the NY Times described Mr Stephens as “understated”, and said he and his wife “zealously guarded” their family’s privacy.

The incident was not the first time in recent memory that someone in New York City had been trapped in an elevator for an extended period. In 2005, a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant was stuck in a lift in the Bronx for about 81 hours.

In 1999, a man returning to his desk from a cigarette break was stuck in an elevator in a Midtown office building for 40 hours. He was freed after a building employee saw him on a security camera. The New Yorker later published video showing how he spent the time.

-New York Times