13th Floor In High Rise Buildings
The 13th floor has long been skipped out of superstition with elevator buttons jumping directly from the 12th to the 14th floor.
13th floor in high rise buildings. The habit of leaving out the 13th floor in tall hotels is a relatively new one. Owners are simply afraid people won t rent. Samuel lewis general manager of the lefrak management company told the new york times that the superstition has now affected the overwhelming majority of tall buildings in america. A survey by cityreality found that out of 629 condo buildings listed with 13 or more floors only 55 labeled the 13th floor as the 13th floor.
The most common include denoting what would otherwise be considered the thirteenth floor as level 14 giving the thirteenth floor an alternate designation such as 12a or m the. Skyscrapers did not come about until 1885. If you live in a newly built high rise building in vancouver you may have noticed a few missing floors. It is because of the disorder triskaidekaphobia and a general dislike of or superstition regarding the number 13.
Mechanical is the most commonly used term but words such as utility technical service and plant are also used. That s an estimate based on 650 mid and high rise buildings that have filed condo declarations with new york city since 2003 including luxury towers going up right now such as 53w53 and 225 w. Even then the first skyscraper the home insurance building was. That means 91 percent of buildings with a 13th floor.
If you took a survey of high rises i think you d find 90 percent don t have a 13th floor. The designation of a 13th floor in some tall buildings particularly hotels has been purposely omitted due to old superstitions about the number 13. This is true for other tall buildings as well. To avoid this problem the 13th level of some buildings is simply re named.
Some hotels skip the number 13 and go straight to 14 when numbering floors. They are present in all tall buildings including the world s tallest skyscrapers with significant. Omitting the 13th floor may take a variety of forms. The thirteenth floor is a designation of a level of a multi level building that is often omitted in countries where the number 13 is considered unlucky.