Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall building with many habitable floors. Most modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise buildings. Skyscrapers may host offices, hotels, residential spaces, and retail spaces. Skyscrapers are a common feature of large cities, often due to a high demand for space and limited availability of land.
One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel frame that supports curtain walls. These curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a steel frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than those made of reinforced concrete. Modern skyscraper walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterized by large surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames and curtain walls. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a small surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a tubular structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic, and other lateral loads. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, which in some cases is also structurally required.
Skyscrapers first appeared in the United States at the end of the 19th century, especially in the cities of Chicago and New York City. Following a building boom across the western world in the early 20th century, skyscraper development was halted in the 1930s by the Great Depression, and did not resume until the 1950s. A skyscraper boom in the downtowns of many American cities took place during the 1960s to 1980s. Towards the second half of the 20th century, skyscrapers began to be built more frequently outside the United States, particularly in East Asia and Southeast Asia during the 1990s. China has since overtaken the United States as the country with the most skyscrapers. Skyscrapers are an increasingly global phenomenon, and can be found in over 70 countries.
There are over 7 thousand skyscrapers over in height worldwide, most of which were built in the 21st century. Over three-quarters of skyscrapers taller than 150 m are located in Asia. Eighteen cities in the world have more than 100 skyscrapers that are taller than, most recently Toronto and Singapore in 2025. The city with the most skyscrapers in the world is Hong Kong, with 569 skyscrapers, followed by Shenzhen in China with 444, New York City with 317, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates with 270. Dubai is home to the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa.
Definition
The term "skyscraper" was first applied to buildings of steel-framed construction of at least 10 stories in the late 19th century, a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in major American cities like New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis.The first steel-frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building, originally 10 stories with a height of, in Chicago in 1885; two additional stories were added. Some point to Philadelphia's 10-story Jayne Building as a proto-skyscraper, or to New York's seven-floor Equitable Life Building, built in 1870. Steel skeleton construction has allowed for today's supertall skyscrapers now being built worldwide. The nomination of one structure versus another being the first skyscraper, and why, depends on what factors are stressed.
The structural definition of the word skyscraper was refined later by architectural historians, based on engineering developments of the 1880s that had enabled construction of tall multi-story buildings. This definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicago's Monadnock Building.
Some structural engineers define a high-rise as any vertical construction for which wind is a more significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high-rises but some other tall structures, such as towers.
Different organizations from the United States and Europe define skyscrapers as buildings at least in height or taller, with "supertall" skyscrapers for buildings higher than and "megatall" skyscrapers for those taller than.
The tallest structure in ancient times was the Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt, built in the 26th century BC. It was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the Lincoln Cathedral having exceeded it in 1311–1549, before its central spire collapsed. The latter in turn was not surpassed until the Washington Monument in 1884, which was surpassed by the Eiffel Tower in 1889, the first ever supertall structure. However, being uninhabited, none of these structures actually comply with the modern definition of a skyscraper. In 1930, the Chrysler Building surpassed the Eiffel Tower by pinnacle height, becoming the tallest structure built until then and the first supertall skyscraper by pinnacle height, only to be surpassed a year later in every regard by the Empire State Building as the first supertall skyscraper also by roof height.
High-rise apartments flourished in classical antiquity. Ancient Roman insulae in imperial cities reached 10 and more stories. Beginning with Augustus, several emperors attempted to establish limits of for multi-stories buildings, but were met with only limited success. Lower floors were typically occupied by shops or wealthy families, with the upper rented to the lower classes. Surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyri indicate that seven-stories buildings existed in provincial towns such as in 3rd century AD Hermopolis in Roman Egypt.
The skylines of many important medieval cities had large numbers of high-rise urban towers, built by the wealthy for defense and status. The residential Towers of 12th century Bologna numbered between 80 and 100 at a time, the tallest of which is the high Asinelli Tower. A Florentine law of 1251 decreed that all urban buildings be immediately reduced to less than. Even medium-sized towns of the era are known to have proliferations of towers, such as the 72 towers that ranged up to height in San Gimignano.
The medieval Egyptian city of Fustat housed many high-rise residential buildings, which Al-Muqaddasi in the 10th century described as resembling minarets. Nasir Khusraw in the early 11th century described some of them rising up to 14 stories, with roof gardens on the top floor complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigating them. Cairo in the 16th century had high-rise apartment buildings where the two lower floors were for commercial and storage purposes and the multiple stories above them were rented out to tenants. An early example of a city consisting entirely of high-rise housing is the 16th-century city of Shibam in Yemen. Shibam was made up of over 500 tower houses, each one rising 5 to 11 stories high, with each floor being an apartment occupied by a single family. The city was built in this way in order to protect it from Bedouin attacks. Shibam still has the tallest mudbrick buildings in the world, with many of them over high.
An early modern example of high-rise housing was in 17th-century Edinburgh, Scotland, where a defensive city wall defined the boundaries of the city. Due to the restricted land area available for development, the houses increased in height instead. Buildings of 11 stories were common, and there are records of buildings as high as 14 stories. Many of the stone-built structures can still be seen today in the old town of Edinburgh. The oldest iron framed building in the world, although only partially iron framed, is The Flaxmill in Shrewsbury, England. Built in 1797, it is seen as the "grandfather of skyscrapers", since its fireproof combination of cast iron columns and cast iron beams developed into the modern steel frame that made modern skyscrapers possible. In 2013 funding was confirmed to convert the derelict building into offices.
Early skyscrapers
In 1857, Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator at the E. V. Haughwout Building in New York City, allowing convenient and safe transport to buildings' upper floors. Otis later introduced the first commercial passenger elevators to the Equitable Life Building in 1870, considered by some architectural historians to be the first skyscraper. Another crucial development was the use of a steel frame instead of stone or brick, otherwise the walls on the lower floors on a tall building would be too thick to be practical. An early development in this area was Oriel Chambers in Liverpool, England, built in 1864. It was only five floors high. The Royal Academy of Arts states, "critics at the time were horrified by its 'large agglomerations of protruding plate glass bubbles'. In fact, it was a precursor to Modernist architecture, being the first building in the world to feature a metal-framed glass curtain wall, a design element which creates light, airy interiors and has since been used the world over as a defining feature of skyscrapers".Further developments led to what many individuals and organizations consider the world's first skyscraper, the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built from 1884 to 1885. While its original height of 42.1 m does not qualify as a skyscraper today, it was record setting for the day. The building of tall buildings in the 1880s gave the skyscraper its first architectural movement, broadly termed the Chicago School, which developed what has been called the Commercial Style.
The architect, Major William Le Baron Jenney, created a load-bearing structural frame. In this building, a steel frame supported the entire weight of the walls, instead of load-bearing walls carrying the weight of the building. This was then draped with a stone curtain for aesthetic purposes. This development led to the "Chicago skeleton" form of construction. In addition to the steel frame, the Home Insurance Building also utilized fireproofing, elevators, and electrical wiring, key elements in most skyscrapers today.
Burnham and Root's Rand McNally Building in Chicago, 1889, was the first all-steel framed skyscraper, while Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Missouri, 1891, was the first steel-framed building with soaring vertical bands to emphasize the height of the building and is therefore considered to be the first early skyscraper. In 1889, the Mole Antonelliana in Italy was 197 m tall.
Most early skyscrapers emerged in the land-strapped areas of New York City and Chicago toward the end of the 19th century. A land boom in Melbourne, Australia between 1888 and 1891 spurred the creation of a significant number of early skyscrapers, though none of these were steel reinforced and few remain today. Height limits and fire restrictions were later introduced. In the late 1800s, London builders found building heights limited due to issues with existing buildings. High-rise development in London is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct protected views of St Paul's Cathedral and other historic buildings. This policy, 'St Paul's Heights', has officially been in operation since 1927.
Concerns about aesthetics and fire safety had likewise hampered the development of skyscrapers across continental Europe for the first half of the 20th century. By 1940, there were around 100 high-rise buildings in Europe. Some examples of these are the tall 1898 Witte Huis ' in Rotterdam; the tall PAST Building in Warsaw; the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool, completed in 1911 and high; the tall 1924 Marx House in Düsseldorf, the tall Borsigturm in Berlin, built in 1924, the tall Hansahochhaus in Cologne, Germany, built in 1925; the Kungstornen ' in Stockholm, Sweden, which were built 1924–25; the Ullsteinhaus in Berlin, Germany, built in 1927; the Edificio Telefónica in Madrid, Spain, built in 1929; the Boerentoren in Antwerp, Belgium, built in 1932; the Prudential Building in Warsaw, Poland, built in 1934; and the Torre Piacentini in Genoa, Italy, built in 1940.
After an early competition between New York City and Chicago for the world's tallest building, New York took the lead by 1895 with the completion of the tall American Surety Building, leaving New York with the title of the world's tallest building for many years. America by far produced the most skyscrapers in this period.