Buildings have three heights, and only one of them gets quoted
Tall buildings are ranked by a figure that includes parts nobody can stand on. That is not a scandal, it is a rule, and it explains why the same building appears at different heights in different lists.
Roof, spire, antenna
A tall building has at least three heights and the lists that rank them have to pick one.
- Height to the roof, or to the highest occupied floor. The number that describes how much building there is.
- Height to the architectural top, which includes spires that are part of the design but hold nothing.
- Height to the tip, including antennas and masts bolted on afterwards.
The convention used by the bodies that publish rankings counts architectural spires and excludes antennas, which is why some buildings appear to move up and down the table between sources. It is also why almost every famous height you know is the largest of the three available numbers.
The Burj Khalifa, and the hundred metres of nothing
The Burj Khalifa is quoted at 828 m, to the tip of its spire. The highest occupied floor sits more than a hundred metres below that. The building is genuinely the tallest thing there is, and the figure everyone repeats includes a stretch of tapering steel that nobody stands on.
That is not deception. The spire is part of the design and it was in the drawings from the start. It does mean that the ratio of 2.51 against the Eiffel Tower is a comparison of two figures that both include ornamental tops, which at least makes them consistent with each other.
The Empire State Building has the widest spread of any building in the set. 443.2 m to the antenna tip, 381 m to the roof. That is a difference of sixty-two metres, more than the whole height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, contained entirely in a mast.
The Eiffel Tower, which grows in summer
The tower is quoted at 330 m including the antennas at the top, and those antennas have been changed several times, so the official figure has moved upward over the decades. The iron structure alone stops about twelve metres lower.
There is a second, smaller effect that is genuinely charming: iron expands with heat, and the tower is measurably taller on a hot afternoon than on a cold night. The change is centimetres, not metres, and it is real.
Against Elizabeth Tower at 96 m the ratio is 3.44. Elizabeth Tower is the structure; Big Ben is the bell inside it, a distinction that quietly breaks a great many published comparisons which put a bell against a tower and do not notice.
The Statue of Liberty, which has three correct heights
This is the clearest case in the catalogue of a single object with several defensible figures.
- 46.05 m from heel to torch: the statue as a sculpture.
- 73.2 m including the pedestal, which is the figure used here.
- 93 m counting the star-shaped fort the pedestal stands on.
All three appear in print regularly. Against the Arc de Triomphe at 50 m, the 73.2 m figure gives a ratio of 1.46. Use the sculpture alone and the arc comes out taller. One object, two opposite conclusions, both sourced.
One World Trade Center, and a number chosen first
One World Trade Center reaches 541.3 m, which is 1,776 feet exactly. The figure was chosen before the building was designed, for the year of the Declaration of Independence, and the design was made to reach it. The roof sits at 417 m, matching the height of the original towers, which was also a deliberate choice.
So here the height is not a measurement at all in the ordinary sense. It is a target that the building was built to hit. Against the Eiffel Tower at 330 m the ratio is 1.64, and both numbers include structure above the last floor.
Tokyo Skytree, which is not a building
Tokyo Skytree stands 634 m and is a broadcasting mast rather than an office tower, which is why it does not appear in most building rankings despite being taller than almost all of them.
The 634 was chosen deliberately: read aloud in Japanese the digits give the old name of the region the tower stands in. Like One World Trade Center, the number came before the structure.
Against the Empire State Building at 443.2 m the ratio is 1.43, comparing a mast to a building measured to its own mast, which is at least even-handed.
Old buildings, which have shrunk
The Great Pyramid of Giza is quoted at 138.5 m, and that is the original height. What stands today is about eight metres shorter, because the smooth casing stones were stripped for other construction over centuries.
The Colosseum is quoted at 48.5 m to the top of the outer wall, and that wall stands on one side only, the rest having been quarried away. The Leaning Tower of Pisa has two heights, 56.7 m on the high side and a couple of metres less on the low one, because the whole building is out of plumb.
The pyramid against the Taj Mahal at 73 m gives 1.90, using the pyramid's original height against a building that is intact. The alternative, today's height against today's height, gives a slightly smaller ratio and is arguably the fairer comparison. The catalogue uses the original because that is the figure every source quotes.
What to ask of any building height
One question does it: does this number include something nobody stands on? For most famous buildings the answer is yes, and it is usually a large fraction of the difference between two competing figures. Once you have asked it, a ranking stops being a ranking of buildings and becomes what it actually is, a ranking of a particular agreed measurement.