Do Buildings Not Have A 13th Floor

But if there is even a minuscule chance that a 13th floor unit won t sell due to superstition then a developer will just as quickly avoid the risk and skip from 12 to 14.

Do buildings not have a 13th floor.

Business owners builders and developers tend to omit the 13 th floor from office buildings and apartment complexes because they may lose out on tenants who refuse to live or work. Many airports skip the 13th gate. But as rational thought will dictate hotels and buildings higher than 12 floors of course have a 13th floor however they do away with it by simply renaming it something else. The habit of leaving out the 13th floor in tall hotels is a relatively new one.

Of course not all hotels skip the 13th floor. Image zoom getty. Italians omit the number 13 from their national lottery. However during the advent of early skyscrapers new york architectural critics warned developers not to exceed the height of the 13th floor.

Eventually this time and culture spanning superstition made its way to the architecture of america. Hospitals and hotels regularly have no room number 13. Starting in the 20th century when skyscrapers began cropping up in bigger cities buildings overwhelmingly forwent marking the 13th floor because of simple economics. The origin of skipping the thirteenth floor when installing elevators is not known.

They didn t want to give anyone a reason not to want to rent space in their building. A good example is that some have suggested the 13th floor in government buildings is not really missing but actually contains top secret governmental departments or more generally that it is proof of something sinister or clandestine going on. Skyscrapers did not come about until 1885. And others are sneaky and find ways to get around it like floor 12a.

These critics insisted that buildings rising above the 13th floor 130 feet or 40 metres would lead to increased street congestion ominous shadows and lower. Airplanes have no 13th aisle. Many cities do not. While the 14 th floor is actually the 13 th floor for obvious structural reasons guests seem to take comfort in the fact that the number 13 is not mentioned at all.

In fact the otis elevators company estimates that 85 of the buildings with their elevators don t have a named 13th floor. Real estate agents tend not to have problems selling units on the particular floor but the fact is that most buildings lack them anyway. Even then the first skyscraper the home insurance building was. Pulling a number out of the floor plan serves to make a building seem taller.