why is there no 13th floor on skyscrapers?

Answer 1

The levels of a multi-story building are numbered sequentially, from "one" or "ground" upwards. In some countries, the number 13 is considered unlucky and building owners will sometimes purposely omit the thirteenth floor. Even landlords who are not themselves superstitious realize that the rentability of suites on the 13th floor might be compromised because of superstitious tenants, or tenants who are afraid their own customers might be superstitious.

How it is done

Simply being skipped

Most commonly, it is skipped altogether. Although the thirteenth floor has been skipped in terms of numbering (i.e., for hotel/apartment/suite numbers), the floor numbered 14 is technically the thirteenth floor of the building; it is simply not numbered as such. Any calculations involving the height of a building based on the height of a floor should take this into account (particularly in reference to BASE jumping).

12A

Sometimes the floor is simply renumbered as 12a; this does not affect the numbers of the higher floors.

Special designations

Other buildings will often use names for certain floors to avoid giving a floor on the building the 13th floor designation. One such example is the Radisson Hotel in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the 13th floor is called the Pool floor.

Not inhabited

Sometimes, the floor is put to some other use (see also conspiracy theories, below). For instance, the thirteenth floor of One Canada Square houses the air conditioning equipment and no rentable offices, though the owners insist that this is merely an architectural coincidence.

Variant

Similarly, new buildings in some parts of China omit the fourth, fourteenth, twenty-fourth, etc. floors, as the word "four" (Hanzi: 四) sounds like "death" (死 - both are pronounced "sì" and "sǐ", respectively) in Mandarin, the predominant dialect for the country, and most other Chinese dialects. A small number of buildings also follow the Western tradition of omitting the thirteenth floor, with the fifteenth floor immediately following the twelfth.

Although the Hanja for four and death are read identically in Korean, buildings in South Korea tend not to omit the fourth floor. However, newer buildings tend to label the fourth floor with the letter F, instead of the number 4.

Conspiracy theory

Some conspiracy theorists have suggested that the thirteenth 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. This implication is often carried over, implicitly or explicitly, into popular culture; for example, in the films The Thirteenth Floor, the hidden research and development labs of Network 23 in the television program 'Max Headroom', and the computer game Floor 13 by Virgin Interactive. In the sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf "floor 13" referred to a secret brig which was several decks high.

It should be noted that to place a floor between those accessible from an elevator, it is necessary to either take longer to travel between the neighboring floors, or accelerate, both of which would be noticed by the riders.

Answer 2

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RE:
why is there no 13th floor on skyscrapers?

Answer 3

13 is considered an unlucky number (why I don't know-sounds like another great question) and so often building planners will skip this floor in assigning a number to each floor. This is not the case all over the world. In Japan 4 is considered an unlucky number and is similarly skipped in their high rise buildings. This is due in part to 4 being pronounced "SHI" which is also how they pronounce the word death.

Answer 4

People are idiots. I would stay in room 13 on the 13th floor of a hotel on Friday the 13th!

Answer 5

for the same reason there's no 13th floor in most hotels. Its a superstitious thing, because bad things always happen to buildings that have a "13th" floor. It's goin' on for so long, people just began to incorporate it into normal operating concepts.

Answer 6

most people find the number 13 unlucky and don't want to work or stay on the thirteenth floor. Although its pretty silly really coz no matter what you name the thing, the thirteenth floor from the ground is still the thirteenth floor even if its called the fouteenth! I wonder if people dont like to work or stay on that one either? Perhaps the 13th is really there but is used for storage etc. this i dont know

Answer 7

The number 13 is suppose to be unlucky. The people who design and build these massive structures don't want to test fate so since they can't just leave that floor out, they disregard the number.

Answer 8

unlucky 13, maybe.

just like in chinese, the number 4 pronounced as 'si' which is quite similar to the pronounciation of the word 'die' in chinese. in some hospitals in Malaysia (even though we have other races like hindu and malays), there is no bed no 4 or room no 4. touch wood!!!

maybe you don't believe it, but other people might believe it. maybe that's why there is no 13th floor in tall building.

Answer 9

Both my wife and I have worked on the 13th floor of different office buildings for different companies. We have stayed on the 13th floor of hotels.

People who are afraid of the number 13 are just ignorant fools.

Answer 10

I've noticed that, most hotels don't have a 13th floor, makes me wonder why not? If it's not true right?