Talk:History of the world's tallest buildings

This looks a little bit like some kid's book report; is there a wikitag for that? 140.247.250.53 (talk) 04:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This article should be called "History of the skyscrapers" because it doesn't talks about other kind of buildings that are tall and old: churches, towers, pyramids, temples, chimneys... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.8.84.68 (talk) 03:23, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the article should be retitled. If it did a fairly good job of covering the history of skyscrapers whilst ignoring other historically tall buildings, then yes, it should be retitled. However, the article at present ignores even some of the history of skyscrapers. Where is mention of the Woolworth Building? The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower? The Singer Building? Even the article at Home Insurance Building states, "[The Home Insurance Building] was never the tallest building in the world or Chicago." So what was at the time? Rather than retitle, I think a major rewriting is in order. -- JeffBillman (talk) 16:34, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Complete rewrite

OK. I basically started this article over from scratch.

I put the old material at User:Herostratus/Skyscrapers. I intend in the coming days to pull some of this - as appropriate, referenced, and not original research - back into the article. (Other editors are of course welcome to add any of this material or new material to the article as they see fit.)

However, my vision of this article is that it will be somewhat shorter than it was. I don't think it should duplicated material at Skyscraper etc. too much, and just concentrate on the issue of "what was the tallest building in the world" at such-and-such time, with the best supporting refs possible.

For my initial pass, I used the Template:Succession box with the the title field of "Tallest building in the world" to determine what was the tallest building. Further research forthcoming. If any of these are not correct, we can find and fix the places where this template is used in the articles, too.

(BTW, the way this is used on Wikipedia, cathedrals are considered structures and not buildings. The first tallest building is the Equitable Life Building. It's predecessor is given as "unknown", and It'll be interesting to see if this really is unknown.)

What the name of this article should be is an interesting problem:

• "History of the tallest buildings in the world" (current title) sort of give the idea that it will be "Here is a list of the 10 or 20 or so tallest buildings, and their histories"
• "History of the tallest building in the world" (singular) would sort of give the impression "Here is the history of Burj Khalifa".
• "Tallest building in the world" (another option) is currently a redirect to "List of tallest buildings in the world" (another arguably rreasonable value would be for it to redirect to Burj Khalifa).

Dunno about that one. Herostratus (talk) 03:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

"The first tallest building is the Equitable Life Building." That seems problematic to me. What, there were no buildings before the Equitable Life Building? I'm also not sure why we need to differentiate between buildings and structures in an historical context. The fact that tall structures were formerly used for religious purposes (e.g. cathedrals, pyramids) and now are used for commercial purposes may be significant, but to ignore this fact entirely by focusing on the latter seems counterproductive to a concise history of "tall buildings". (Having said that, I agree with you about the problem of nomenclature, and I don't have any good ideas myself.) -- JeffBillman (talk) 15:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Er, never mind. I see what you've done with the article. Well done! My concerns are moot, as it seems you've already addressed them. -- JeffBillman (talk) 15:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Charts

There is a timeline that was put in, it uses something called "EasyTimeline". It's very comprehensive, but its kind of busy. Too busy, to my mind. I tried making an alternate chart, which is a bitmap graphic - in some ways this is an improvement (less busy, fits on one screen) and in other ways not (less comprehensive, not updatable). Also, for some reason it doesn't want to easily display at its native size, which is 638x468 pixels... but I don't know much (anything really) about image display.

So I don't know. I'm not really happy with either chart. I left them both in (but moved them down in the article). I don't know if they should both be in, or only one, or maybe neither. Probably not both, at any rate -- just throwing charts at the reader is probably not good information design. Herostratus (talk) 02:29, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Diagrams / Copyediting

I would like to draw the attention of all the active editors of this article towards the idea of putting some diagram images of skyscrapers which should depicts the timeline of skyscrapers since the beginning. Hop the diagrams covers more subject than the current graphs.

And some more concerns about the ongoing editing in this article is the "content" which lacks references, and reliable sources, as we can see the article is tagged for the lack of references or reliable sources. So we need to emphasize on this subject.

Another concern is the tone of the article which according to me fails to meet the criteria of an Wikipedia article, the article needs to be Wikified in this regard. To do this i will suggest to invite some volunteer copy editors, but we should invite them after some exhaustive copy editing of our own. What you people say about this, please share your suggestions and recommendations to improve the quality of this article.

Regards.

Nabil rais2008 (talk) 18:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Any suggestions or ideas ???

Nabil rais2008 (talk) 14:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Mole Antonelliana

This building, the height of which was increased in stages, then decreased, seems to have been ignored in this timeline. However, its wikiarticles in English and Italian are referenced only poorly, if at all.--BillFlis (talk) 07:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

At 167.5 metres tall, the Mole Antonellina in Turin, Italy, deserves an entry in your table 'Tallest Buildings (from 1901).' The research I've conducted suggests it was the world's tallest building (though not structure) from its completion in 1889 until 1908 when it was surpassed by the Singer Building. [It retained, however, the title of world's tallest masonry building until c.1931 when work began to strengthen the structure with reinforced concrete, at which point that title passed to Philadelphia City Hall.] Purply Simon (talk) 23:09, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

German flag

German flags on my screen have white as their middle stripe. Colors on my screen don't generally seem to be wrong, so I think this is a mistake on the page rather than with my computer. Kdammers (talk) 05:26, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

It's the flag of the German Empire. Herostratus (talk) 06:58, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I see, thanks. How-ever, when I mouse-over, I get a snippet about Germany, not about the German Empire. Kdammers (talk) 07:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Full height of World Trade Center?

This article erroneously claims that the former WTC1 tower was the tallest building to the tip until 2000, even though the following source reveals that the antenna tower was not actually added to WTC1 until 1978. Thus, Sears Tower held this title, until 1978.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=74b4393b9d193027f9add2f60431c439

I will make the correction to the dates. --Rkrause (talk) 03:21, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Non-Western Achievements

Outside the Mediterranean region and the fleeting mention of Egypt's great pyramids, I note that nothing is said about the achievements of Non-Westerern civilizations, such as the amazing true cast iron architecture of China's Song Dynasty, let alone elsewhere. Here are a couple of sources if anyone wants to add some information on this, otherwise I probably will myself: Especially the Iron Pagoda at Yuquan, but also Mesoamerican Pyramids, for example. Jamutaq (talk) 18:07, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, the Potala (built in the mid-17th century) is 117 m tall - some of the lower part of that height is backed by the mountain slope. on the other hand the entire palace is built in terrain where most engineers would never begin to consider erecting a tall multi-storey building, especially without machines of any kind. The palace was, of course, unknown to the West until the early 20th century. 188.151.233.219 (talk) 20:55, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Highest Skyscraper 1880s

Home Insurance was the first modern steelframed skyscraper, but not the highest after compl. WUTB and NYT Bldg (both 1875) in NYC were higher with ~70m/230ft. Bonnatia (talk) 10:43, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

And what about Law Courts of Brussels, St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, Milwaukee City Hall, Wiener Rathaus, Texas State Capital or Fettes College? Greetings. Bonnatia (talk) 10:59, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

The table looks strange. There are hundreds or thousands of multi-floor towers ("excluding religious buildings" = non-religious multi-floor buildings with rooms, windows and stairs) preceding the 18th century that are/were taller than a stupid 16 m. For starters, how about the Palazzo Vecchio (early 14th century) of Florence? Its famous tower rises to 94 m and the building was the seat of government of a republic. 188.150.70.42 (talk) 22:55, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

But gap. Filling it.

There is nothing beyond the Korean Pagoda before the 13th century. This should be remedied. I think a full section on 7th-11th century pagodas would be good for the page. Thoughts? Lukeweiss1 (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I meant "big" gap, of course Lukeweiss1 (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Request for consistency between pages

Contrary information is given on different related Wikipedia pages.

The ‘History of the world's tallest buildings’ page gives Old St Paul’s as the first structure taller than the Great Pyramid but both the ‘List of tallest buildings and structures’ and the ‘List of tallest freestanding structures’ both give Lincoln as the first structure taller than it.

Can someone who knows what they’re talking about make these pages internally consistent?Jjc2002 (talk) 12:42, 29 April 2021 (UTC)Jjc2002

Inconsistency in List of Tallest Skyscrapers

1998–2004 Petronas Towers, but graphic shows that WTC (had) and Willis Tower has both a greater pinnacle height as well as a higher top floor level. 62.99.176.46 (talk) 21:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

(Re-) Structuring

Hi everyone, as you can see I tried to make the structure/chapters more coherent with the building/structure logic and the chronologic aim of the article which calls itself a history article.

I just added the following in th pre 13th century chapter and took it out again to put it here for discussion, because it is not backed by refs, just indirect through the different data. So I wonder what you think? I called it cautiously "Overview":

Years tallest	Name	Location	Height	Increase	Notes
3rd century BC–200 CE	Lighthouse of Alexandria	Alexandria	103–118 m (338–387 ft)
200–516	Kanishka stupa		120 m (390 ft)
516-534	Yongning Pagoda	Luoyang	136.7 m (448 ft)
534-8th century	Kanishka stupa		120 m (390 ft)
8th century-11th century	Jetavanaramaya		120 m (390 ft)
11th–1180	Lighthouse of Alexandria	Alexandria	103–118 m (338–387 ft)
1180-1311	Malmesbury Abbey		131 m (430 ft)

Nsae Comp (talk) 17:27, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I like it! it's exactly what this article needs- just a straight-up timeline of the world's tallest buildings. Chickeness (talk) 23:57, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Burj Khalifa in 2017.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:40, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

1548 or 1549?

In four places in this article the year 1549 appears, all representing the date of the collapse of the spire of Lincoln Cathedral. However, the article on the cathedral itself gives the date as 1548. So which is it? 2601:C6:4100:F980:E6E4:BA76:C97D:A42D (talk) 05:31, 14 March 2024 (UTC)