The July 30 editorial about downtown skyscrapers was most welcome. But your parenthetical remark that Chicago never should have lost the honor of having the world’s tallest building demands a response.
The basic measure of building height used by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat is really quite simple: decorative spires count; antennae don’t count. And we didn’t just make this up: The tradition of including decorative spires in the height of a building goes back at least to 1930, when the Chrysler Building was completed in New York. There were charges at the time that the building’s enormous spire had the sole purpose of making the Chrysler the tallest building in the world. Though these charges were probably well-founded, the Chrysler Building was acknowledged by all as the new record-holder.
Including the antennae would not give the Sears Tower the world’s-tallest title anyway. New York’s World Trade Center is taller to the tip of its antenna.
