Everything on this site
The day and the architect it is named after, what counts as a skyscraper, how tall buildings go up and why they stay up, the height records, and the cities that hold the towers.
The day
September 3rd, the architect it commemorates, and what people do to mark it.
Why Skyscraper Day is September 3rd
The origin of the date, the elevator, the steel frame, and how Chicago and New York made the tall building ordinary.
Louis Sullivan
The architect whose birthday the day marks, his buildings, and the sentence about form and function.
Photographing skyscrapers
Converging verticals, the blue hour, and why most good skyline shots are taken from across water.
How to celebrate
Ten things to do on September 3rd, from observation decks to paper models.
Skyscraper observation decks
The highest decks in the world, what a ticket costs, and why the tallest one rarely has the best view.
Skyscraper museums and tours
Where to see tall buildings in person: the Skyscraper Museum, the Chicago river cruise, the Sullivan trading room, Open House and free walks.
Frank Lloyd Wright and the tall building
Sullivan's draftsman built one skyscraper and proposed a mile-high tower nobody would fund.
What a skyscraper is
Definitions, the first one, and who gets the credit for inventing it.
Skyscraper facts
Twelve things that are true and worth knowing, each one linking to the page that explains it.
Databases, forums and museums
Where to look a building up, who keeps the records, and which forums are worth reading.
What is a skyscraper?
Where the 150 m line comes from, which buildings fall below it, and what supertall means.
What was the first skyscraper?
Chicago's Home Insurance Building holds the title, and five other buildings have a claim to it.
Who invented the skyscraper?
William LeBaron Jenney engineered the frame, Louis Sullivan gave it a form, and the credit is still argued over.
Skyscraper architects and engineers
From Jenney's iron frame to Fazlur Rahman Khan's tube systems, and the firms that design supertalls today.
Supertall and megatall
The 300 m and 600 m classes, how few megatalls exist, and what changes structurally that high.
How they work
Construction, movement, safety and the machines that make height usable.
How skyscrapers are built
Foundations, the core, the frame and the curtain wall, in the order they go up.
Skyscraper foundations
How deep they go, why the answer is about geology rather than height, and what holds the Burj Khalifa up without bedrock.
Do skyscrapers sway?
They do, by design. How far, whether anyone feels it, and what a tuned mass damper does.
The glass curtain wall
Why skyscrapers are made of glass: a skin that carries no floor load, hung off the frame, from the Hallidie Building to the Walkie-Talkie.
Are skyscrapers safe?
Fire compartmentation, phased evacuation, refuge floors and earthquake engineering.
Skyscrapers and earthquakes
Why a tower often rides out shaking better than a house, base isolation, ductile frames, and where the real risk sits.
Skyscraper elevators
Otis made height usable. Sky lobbies, destination dispatch, and why the descent is slower than the climb.
How much does a skyscraper cost?
Roughly $300 to $1,000 a square foot before land, what named towers cost in the year they were built, and why height costs more than it earns.
Abandoned skyscrapers
The Ryugyong Hotel, Goldin Finance 117, Torre de David, and what a tower does during the decades it stands unfinished.
How skyscraper windows are cleaned
The crane on the roof, the rope-access crews, what the job pays, and the rules that stop work when the wind picks up.
Records and rankings
Which building is tallest, which held the title before it, and the ones worth knowing.
The tallest building in the world
The Burj Khalifa, 828 m, and why it has held the record longer than anything since the Empire State Building.
The tallest residential buildings
Central Park Tower at 472 m, the New York pencil towers, air rights, and why views pay for height when office rent does not.
The Burj Khalifa
Height, floors, what it cost, who owns it, how Adrian Smith designed it, and how to get up to the decks.
The Empire State Building
381 m, 102 floors, 13 months to build, two observatories, and the world record held for about 40 years.
The Chrysler Building
The spire hidden inside the roof, the stainless steel crown, and eleven months as the tallest building on earth.
One World Trade Center
541 m, or 1,776 ft for the year of the Declaration of Independence, and the tallest building in the United States.
Taipei 101
508 m, 101 floors, the first building past half a kilometer, and a 660-tonne damper the public can go and look at.
The Shanghai Tower
632 m, a 120-degree twist that cut the wind load by about a quarter, nine stacked atria, and elevators at 20.5 m per second.
The Shard
310 m over London Bridge station, 72 habitable floors, Renzo Piano's eight glass facets, and the deck on floor 72.
Tallest building by year
Every record holder since 1885, and the measuring rule that decides the list.
Famous skyscrapers
Twelve towers by height and year, from the Burj Khalifa down to the one that started it.
The Willis Tower
Chicago's tallest, the world record for 25 years, and the nine-tube frame that gives it its stepped shape.
The Petronas Twin Towers
452 m, 88 floors, the sliding skybridge, and the spires that took the record off Chicago in 1998.
Art Deco skyscrapers
Setbacks, crowns and the 1916 zoning rule that gave New York its wedding-cake towers.
Future skyscrapers
What is actually under construction, what was only announced, and where the work has gone now that height is capped.
Cities
Where the towers are, how many each city has, and what pushed it upward.
Skyscraper cities of the world
Twelve vertical cities, ranked and explained.
Skyscrapers in New York
Around 320 towers over 150 m, the bedrock under them, and which ones you can go up.
Skyscrapers in Chicago
Where the skyscraper was invented, how many there are, and how it compares to New York.
Skyscrapers in Dubai
The Burj Khalifa's city, how it filled with towers in forty years, and whether they are empty.
Skyscrapers in Hong Kong
The world's leader, with more tall buildings than anywhere, on a quarter of its own land.
Skyscrapers in China
More height built than the rest of the world combined, and the rules that stopped it.
Skyscrapers in India
Mumbai holds nearly all of them, on a peninsula with nowhere left to spread.
Skyscrapers in Japan
Over 300 towers, a 325 m ceiling, and the earthquake engineering behind both numbers.
Skyscrapers in London
The Shard, the nicknamed towers of the City, and the protected views that keep the rest low.
Skyscrapers in Singapore
An aviation cap that tied three towers at 280 m, Marina Bay, and the buildings with plants on them.
Skyscrapers in Toronto
North America's busiest tower builder, a 50-year-old record holder, and why the CN Tower is not on the list.