What Is a High-Rise Building?

What Is a High-Rise Building?

A building is an enclosed structure that has walls, floors, a roof, and usually windows.
A ‘tall building’ is a multi-story structure in which most occupants depend on elevators
[lifts] to reach their destinations. The most prominent tall buildings are called ‘ high-rise
buildings ’ in most countries and ‘tower blocks’ in Britain and some European countries.
The terms do not have internationally agreed definitions.

However, a high-rise building can be defined as follows:

● Any structure where the height can have a serious impact on evacuation

● For most purposes, the cut-off point for high-rise buildings is around seven
stories. Sometimes, seven stories or higher define a high-rise, and sometimes the
definition is more than seven stories. Sometimes, the definition is stated in terms of
linear height (feet or meters) rather than stories.

● Generally, a high-rise structure is considered to be one that extends higher than

the maximum reach of available fire-fighting equipment. In absolute numbers, this has been
set variously between 75 feet (23 meters) and 100 feet (30 meters), or about seven to ten
stories (depending on the slab-to-slab distance between floors).

The exact height above which a particular building is deemed a high-rise is specified
by fire and building codes for the country, region, state, or city where the building is
located. When the building exceeds the specified height, then fire, an ever-present danger
in such facilities, must be fought by fire personnel from inside the building rather than
from outside using fire hoses and ladders.

For practicality and convenience such a multi-level or multi-story structure uses

elevators as a vertical transportation system and, in addition, some utilize escalators to
move people between lower floors.
Development of High-Rise Buildings
From the individual ‘ skyscraper ’ to the urban clusters of ‘concrete canyons,’ the
names for high-rise buildings have always combined a kind of admiration and reverence
for the magnitude of the feat with a kind of fear about the threat to human values implicit
in operating on so large a scale. The Tower of Babel is cited as a warning against pride
and over-reaching, not as a goal to be sought.

According to the Old Testament, after the Flood, people wanted to make a name
for themselves by building a city called Babel with a tower that reached into heaven.
The tower was constructed using brick for stone and tar (asphalt) for mortar.

During the rapid growth of the Roman Empire under the reigns of Julius and
Augustus Caesar, the city of Rome became the site of a large number of hastily
constructed apartment buildings—many of which were erected to considerable heights.
Because building collapse due to structural failure was frequent, laws were passed
that limited the heights of buildings—first to 70 feet (21m) and then 60 feet (18m).

Throughout subsequent history there have been other tall structures— pyramids and
towers, castles and cathedrals—but it was not until the end of the 19th century that the
skyscraper was born. More than 150 years ago, cities looked very different from the way
they look today. The buildings that housed people and their businesses were rarely over
the height of a flagpole. Urban landscapes tended to be flat and uniform in pattern, apart
from monuments, temples, and town halls; and cathedrals (adorned with domes, spires, or
towers) which towered above everything else in a city or town; they were visible from
miles away. Historically, the word tower usually designated the church and the town hall
until the birth of the skyscraper. The main evolutionary change has been in function, from
a Campanile watchtower of the Renaissance or minaret of Islamic architecture to the
office building.
Two major developments led to the skyscrapers that dominate major city skylines
throughout the modern world:

1. In 1853, an American, Elisha Graves Otis, invented the world’s first safety lift or
elevator. This new form of vertical transportation enabled people to travel safely
upward at a much greater speed and with considerably less effort than by walking

2. In the 1870s, steel frames became available, gradually replacing the weaker
combination of cast iron and wood previously used in construction. Until then,
the walls had to be very thick to carry the weight of each floor.
Steel frames were able to carry the weight of more floors, so walls became simply
cladding for the purpose of insulating and adorning the building.
 High-Rises Arise

Home Insurance Building 1885. This

10-story building, designed by
engineer William Le Baron Jenney,
is generally considered the world’s
first skyscraper. It was built in
Chicago in 1885, using a steel frame.
It was
demolished in 1931. The ABN
AMRO office building now stands
on this site. Collection of the
Chicago Historical
Society (ICHi-00990).

The 10-story Home Insurance Building built in Chicago in 1885, is generally considered
to be the world’s first skyscraper. As stated in the Architectural Record,
before the Home Insurance Building was demolished to allow construction of the New
Field Building, a committee of architects and others was appointed by the Marshall
Field Estate to decide if it was entitled to the distinction of being the world’s first
skyscraper. This committee, after a thorough investigation, handed down a verdict that it
was unquestionably the first building of skeletal construction.” Engineer William Le
Baron Jenney designed this 180-foot (55 meters) tall building using a steel frame to
support the weight of the structure. Jenney stated in 1883, we are building to a height to
rival the Tower of Babel.
In the 1890s, most European cities like London, Paris, and Rome rejected tall
buildings in their historical city centers meanwhile opting for height control regulations
to maintain their low skylines. Today, however, we witness Paris and London giving
away their horizontality in favor of the vertical scale.
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. This sprawling
hotel was an 1898 combination of the
Waldorf and Astoria hotels
(1891 – 1893 and 1895 –18 97) in New
York City. Collection of the New-York
Historical Society from the George Hall
collection.

People have lived in apartment buildings with elevators

since the 1860s. But until the [nineteen] twenties they did
not exceed about 15 floors. These “ skyscratchers were
laughable to Emery Roth.
To him is owed the Ritz Tower], built in 1926, the first
modern residential skyscraper, 41 stories, 165 meters (540
feet) high. The Ritz Tower rapidly became the prototype for
a new lifestyle. Half hotel, half apartment block, it was
particularly suited to the nomadic world of business and to
people who were already deciding to move to the country
and to maintain only a pied-a-terre in town. By the early
thirties New York had about 150 skyscrapers of this type.
Better yet, the model was exported to other cities and other
continents. In 1934, the Park Hotel was built in Shanghai
on the same principle of small apartments with hotel
service—22 stories high and tower-shaped; it was the
tallest building in the Far East.
In Buenos Aires the Kavanagh, at 33 stories the highest
skyscraper of the period to be built in reinforced concrete,
is a residential tower.