William Le Baron Jenney was born on September 25, 1832.  And of course you know who he is.  He’s the father of the skyscraper.  He built the world’s first skyscraper, which was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago.  Completed in 1885, it came in at 138 feet with a total of 10 stories, which is truly nothing by today’s standards.  Even then there were taller buildings, but to be called a skyscraper there are rules.  The first rule is that it has to be at least 500 feet tall, which comes out around 50 stories. OK, that’s more of a modern rule.  Back in 1885 10 stories was good enough.   As well, it has to be self-supporting, so you can’t use guy-wires and stuff like that to hold it up.  It must have habitable space – people have to be able to live or work on at least half the floors, which means it can’t be something like a church spire or a radio tower.  It has to have safe elevators.  I mean, seriously, do you want to walk up that many stairs?  And finally, it has to have a strong skeleton, either of steel or reinforced concrete.  It’s that “skeleton” that makes the difference.  It’s that skeleton that allows Jenney to say he was the first.

 

When I was a kid I built an 18 story card house, which is no where near the world record of 54 stories, but still impressive.  Trust me, it takes a lot of cards, each one weighing right at two grams.  The higher it got, the more the upper cards weighed down on the lower floors.  The same is true with buildings.  If built entirely out of brick or stone, the weight of the upper stories pressing down on the lower stories would make the building unstable.

 

Jenney got around the problem by using a steel skeleton.  To be sure, he was not the first to use a steel skeleton in a building.  He was the first, though, to use both structural steel and iron framing, along with a brick sheathing.  This allowed him to put in more windows, since the exterior walls weren’t holding the weight of the upper floors. 

 

Nowadays buildings are classified by their height.  A “Tall Building” is around 165 feet tall with at least 14 stories, and it needs to be higher than the rest of the neighborhood, at least the normal buildings around it.  A Skyscraper is right at 500 feet.  Supertalls come in just under 1000 feet.  And Megatalls are 1,968 feet and then some. 

 

I went up in the Sears Tower back in the ‘90s, back when it still was the Sears Tower, and back when it still was the tallest building in the world.  It was plenty tall for me, coming in at 110 stories, or 1,451 feet.  The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world from 1931 to 1970, weighing in at 1,250 feet.  That was followed by the North Tower of the World Trade Building, at 1,368 feet. 

 

The tallest building in the world now is Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 2,717 feet.  Until August 2028.  That’s when the Jeddah Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is planned on being completed.  It will come in at 3,281 feet.  That’s well over half a mile.  And then there’s the Rise Tower, which is planned to be completed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, sometime in 2030.  When finished, it will be 6,562 feet tall.  That’s over two kilometers.  That’s well over a mile.  That’s just crazy.  There’s nothing taller planned... yet.

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