skyscraper

     

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable builing. There is no official definition or a precise cutoff height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper. However, as per usual practice in most cities, the definition is used empirically, depending on the relative impact of the shape of a building to a city's overall skyline. Thus, depending on the average height of the rest of the buildings and/ or structures in a city, even a building of 80 meters height (approximately 262 ft) may be considered a skyscraper provided that it clearly stands out above its surrounding built environment and significantly changes the overall skyline of that particular city.

Trivia about skyscraper

  • In Chicago in 1885, William Jenney rose to new heights when he built the first structure called this
  • Architecture's Pritzker Prize medal is based on designs by Louis Sullivan, "father of" this type of soaring building
  • The 10-story Home Insurance Building, considered the first of these, was demolished in 1931
  • Methinks it's a high sail on a ship, or a tall building on land
  • The 1893 novel "The Cliff-Dwellers" centers on this type of high-rise structure; Chi-town's first was completed in 1885
  • Type of building that's the title of a 1981 book by New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger

Found pages about skyscraper