Thou Shall Have Fun!
“Vacation Bible School” is a phrase that gets less exciting
for kids as each word is introduced.
@pjtlynchtall but only 62 stories?
It’s because stories are
a pretty meaningless
measurement. “That’s
why we don’t refer to
stories when we talk
about the height of
buildings; we refer to
meters and feet,” says
Jason Gabel of the
Council on Tall
Buildings and Urban
Habitat in Chicago.9
For years, Los
Angeles required
any building
75 feet high or taller
to install a helipad on
the roof to rescue ten-
ants during a fire or
other emergency. But
it made for boring
architecture—flat roofs,
no spires. The city fi-
nally agreed to change
the rule if other safety
requirements were met,
and in 2017, the 1,100-
foot Wilshire Grand
Center became the tall-
est building west of theMississippi, thanks to
its sail-like top and
proud spire. (It has a
helipad tucked near
the top too.)10
The largest
skyscraper in
the world al-
ways seems to be under
construction. Jeddah
Tower in Saudi Arabia
is the latest, and it’s
slated to stretch nearly
one kilometer (3,280
feet) into the sky when
it’s completed in 2020.11
By some mea-
sures, the 2,063-
foot KVLY-TV
tower near Blanchard,
North Dakota, is the
tallest structure in the
United States. It’s held
up by guy wires, but it
does the job. “You need
to cover a large area to
get to enough people,”
Doug Jenson, chief
engineer at KVLY-NBC,
told medium.com.12
If you are prone
to wooziness,
avoid Chicago’s
Willis Tower (formerly
the Sears Tower). Like
most skyscrapers, it is
designed to sway in the
wind and has been
known to move three
feet in a stiff gale. Many
builders put hundreds
of tons of ballast at the
top of their towers to
limit the motion.13
Surprisingly,
Frank Lloyd
Wright, Amer-
ica’s most celebrated
architect, is the father
of only one skyscraper.
Wright had designed the
structure for New York
City, but the Depression
put the kibosh on that
plan. Finally, in 1956,
oil-pipeline magnate
Harold C. Price commis-
sioned the 19-story Price
Tower for his company’s
headquarters in Bartles-
ville, Oklahoma.Reader’s Digest 13 Things
30 june 2019 | rd.com