Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a building tall enough to scrape the sky. The sky has never reported any scraping, and engineers have quietly lowered the definition to “tall enough that the lift has music”.^[1]

A skyscraper is built from the bottom up, because building one from the top down was tried once, in 1904, and the top would not stay up. It is, in effect, a very tall staircase that someone has put rooms around so nobody has to look at it.

Height

The height of a skyscraper is measured from the bottom to the top. A 1996 dispute over whether the antenna counted was heard by a panel of eleven experts for six years, who concluded that the top was “the bit at the top” and adjourned.^[2]

The thirteenth floor

Many skyscrapers have no thirteenth floor. The floor is still there; it has been renamed the fourteenth, and the people who work on it have been asked not to bring it up.

Windows

The windows of a tall skyscraper are cleaned continuously: by the time the cleaners reach the bottom, the top is dirty again. One building’s windows have been cleaned without pause since 1931, and the glass is now believed to be mostly clean.

See also

• Staircase – what a skyscraper is hiding
• Ladder – a skyscraper for one
• Chimney – tall, but no lift
• Redwood – a natural competitor

References

1. Storey, S. (1996). The Bit at the Top. Lofty Press.
2. Squeegee, S. (1931– ). “Nearly There”. Ongoing.