# The first skyscraper?



## WrightTurn (Nov 7, 2008)

For a long time the first true skyscraper was thought to be the Home Insurance Building. 

Here is a link to an image:

http://www.debdebe.org/wp-content/ho...e-building.jpg

However, the following is from a recent article in Science News discussing the HIB's role in skyscraper development: 

"If there is a building in which all these technical factors--structural system, elevator, utilities--converge at the requisite level of maturity," argues architectural historian Carl Condit, "it's the Equitable Life Assurance Building in New York." Completed in 1870, the building rose 7-1/2 stories, twice the height of its neighbors. To lighten the building and keep costs down, engineer George B. Post used a primitive type of skeletal frame in its construction. A great fire destroyed the building in 1912.

This would seem a fairly solid argument to me. Certainly some buildings of antiquity were taller--even much taller in some case. But we don't count the Pyramids as skyscrapers per se.

Or do you? How do you define the term "skyscraper?" If your definition is different from Condit's, what is the earliest example you would give?


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## philadweller (Oct 30, 2003)

I would not count the pyramids or the early cathedrals of Europe skyscrapers. I would not even call the Eiffel Tower a true skyscraper. Although all these buildings scrape the sky they were built for reasons other than to house people and businesses on a limited land mass. I think the early buildings of Yemen may be the very first skyscrapers around.Sure you can call tall buildings in the suburbs skyscrapers but I think they were intended to make the most of a specific urban lot.


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## WrightTurn (Nov 7, 2008)

Aren't they more watch towers, like the Italian campaniles?

I think any definition has to include elevators in any case. Otherwise practical use becomes an issue.


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## philadweller (Oct 30, 2003)

I agree about elevators.

Yemen looks like an early (200 AD) Upper West Side.


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## 6-6-6 (Jan 14, 2008)

bologna's


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## helghast (Oct 23, 2007)

the 1st skyscrpaer is and always was "Home Insurance Building" not the Equitable Life Assurance Building. period


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## LEP (Dec 8, 2003)

What about the leaning tower of Pisa


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## FIDEL CASTRO (Nov 20, 2007)

What about Babel?


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

Why should skyscrapers be defined by having steel inner structure or not?


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

Because then you would have endless debates of what the first skyscraper was.

You can argue about "tall buildings" all you want, but a skyscraper is defined by it's steel structure and use of elevators.

I'm sure there are a lot of buildings from the 1870's (and before) that had 7+ stories.


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

eklips said:


> Why should skyscrapers be defined by having steel inner structure or not?


It shouldn't. These contrived definitions are from a modern Western perspective that disregards history. A building shouldn't need a steel structure or an elevator to be called a skyscraper. An elevator is simply a feature built into a skyscraper to make it more practical. What building technique was used is also irrelevant.

The Pyramids in Egypt are skyscrapers as is the Tower of Babel, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and those towers in Yemen.


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## ovem (Mar 25, 2007)

Alexandria's lighthouse is the first one by far.


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## Eureka! (Jun 7, 2006)

isaidso said:


> It shouldn't. These contrived definitions are from a modern Western perspective that disregards history. A building shouldn't need a steel structure or an elevator to be called a skyscraper. An elevator is simply a feature built into a skyscraper to make it more practical. What building technique was used is also irrelevant.
> 
> The Pyramids in Egypt are skyscrapers as is the Tower of Babel, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and those towers in Yemen.


I agree with the elevator bit. If you are looking for criteria for the first 'modern world' skyscraper then maybe. However, I don't think the Pyramids should be considered skyscrapers. They don't really have 'floors', just a maze of tunnels and are more wide then tall.


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

Eureka! said:


> I agree with the elevator bit. If you are looking for criteria for the *first 'modern world' skyscraper* then maybe. However, I don't think the Pyramids should be considered skyscrapers. They don't really have 'floors', just a maze of tunnels and are more wide then tall.


*Modern* skyscraper wasn't the the thread question. A pyramid isn't nearly as practical as modern skyscrapers, but once again, criteria such as floors simply make a skyscraper more useful.

Skyscraper means a building that scrapes the sky. Layout, floor plans, modern technology, windows, function, etc. don't change the fact that a pyramid is a tall building that scrapes the sky. 

Your argument implies that if we constructed more usable floors inside the pyramid that it suddenly becomes a skyscraper? People have pre conceived notions of what a skyscraper is simply because of the era we live in. 2000 years from now, functions and layout within buildings may change again, but it won't change the fact that the pyramids scrape the sky in the same way that the CN Tower, or Petronas Towers do.


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## Skybean (Jun 16, 2004)

> Giant Wild Goose Pagoda or Big Wild Goose Pagoda (Chinese: 大雁塔; pinyin: Dàyàn Tǎ), is a Buddhist pagoda located in southern Xi'an, Shaanxi province, China. It was built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty and originally had five stories, although the structure was rebuilt in 704 during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian and its exterior brick facade renovated during the Ming Dynasty. One of the pagoda's many functions was to hold sutras and figurines of the Buddha that were brought to China from India by the Buddhist translator and traveller Xuanzang.














> The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, sometimes Little Wild Goose Pagoda (Chinese: 小雁塔; pinyin: Xiǎoyàn Tǎ), is one of two significant pagodas in the city of Xi'an, China, the site of the old Han and Tang capital Chang'an. The other notable pagoda is the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, originally built in 652 and restored in 704. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda was built between 707–709, during the Tang Dynasty under Emperor Zhongzong of Tang (r 705–710). The pagoda stood 45 m (147 ft) until the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake. The earthquake shook the pagoda and damaged it so that it now stands at a height of 43 m (141 ft) with fifteen levels of tiers. The pagoda has a brick frame built around a hollow interior, and its square base and shape reflect the building style of other pagodas from the era.












^^ 1200 years before the 7 1/2 storey building in NYC, this pagoda was already standing at twice the number of floors.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

Just checked on wikipedia the history of the term. Quite ironic that after 3 years on the site I'd never done that before.

"The word "skyscraper" originally was a nautical term referring to a tall mast or its main sail on a sailing ship. The term was first applied to buildings in the late 19th century as a result of public amazement at the tall buildings being built in Chicago and New York City. The traditional definition of a skyscraper began with the "first skyscraper", a steel-framed ten storey building. Chicago's now demolished ten storey steel-framed Home Insurance Building (1885) is generally accepted as the "first skyscraper"."

So the term skyscraper was first coined by people being impressed by high buildings, and it is afterwards that experts gave it an ethnocentrist description.

I think it's safe to think that the height of a building compared to it's general environment is a much better criteria than it having a steel structure or not.


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

But that's the point. When you say "skyscraper" you are referring to a modern tower, which in just about every case is made using steel. Any tall building that was built prior to the Home Insurance Building wasn't called a skyscraper. It was generally called a tower or some varation of that word. The Pyramids are massive structures that just happen to be tall. I wouldn't consider them a tower.


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## ZZ-II (May 10, 2006)

the real first :


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## redstone (Nov 15, 2003)

I would think the old pagodas of ancient China.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

hudkina said:


> But that's the point. When you say "skyscraper" you are referring to a modern tower, which in just about every case is made using steel. Any tall building that was built prior to the Home Insurance Building wasn't called a skyscraper. It was generally called a tower or some varation of that word. The Pyramids are massive structures that just happen to be tall. I wouldn't consider them a tower.


If I remember well the towers in La Défense are made of a concrete core and not of the usual steel structure. 

If we trust that wikipedia quote, skyscrapers was used as an expression to describe the tall buildings that were starting to mushroom in Chicago and NY by the inhabitants. The engineering used to support them is irrelevant, as if these people wouldn't have called today's La Défense towers skyscrapers.... It seemed to be only about size, not engineering...

Stupid sophism made by "experts" as usual who are enable to realise that not everyone has the same subjectivities as they do. Hence the stupid quest for the "first skyscraper" amongst low rise steel structures buildings moreso than other older tall towers...


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

It's not like it's against the law to call the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids of Giza skyscrapers... You can call them whatever you want.

It's like trying to discern the first "Rock and Roll" song. The term "Rock and Roll" was coined in the 50's, but that style of music is heavily influenced by earlier Rhythm and Blues and Country. There's not really any one song you can go back to and say that was the first "Rock and Roll" song. You can however go back and look at which songs first used electric guitars or had a steady drum beat, etc.


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

Isaidso is very correct in his ideas.

I think the term 'skyscraper' needs to be boiled down to get an answer to this question. It basically just refers to any human built structure that purposefully designed and constructed with height being a priority. 

If this discussion starts inventing rules to define structures then it will never get anywhere. 

What makes this building (HIB)>









Any different to this, other than the fact that they had different methods of moving up the levels of the building? (Cologne Cathedral) 










Cologne Cathedral was the tallest building in the world for many, many years. It's certainly not the first skyscraper; but it's still a man-made structure with a height that would have made it a skyscraper before Chicago and NYC took off. 

Let's not get bogged down in semantics.


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## redstone (Nov 15, 2003)

Because there are no usable floors up the spire of the cathedral?


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

^^ Last time I checked, Cologne Cathedral has usable upper floors (used in maintaining windows/structure/bell ringing etc.) - all cathedrals do.

Those old mud buildings in Yemen have usable upper floors as well, so by your definition they must be skyscrapers as well...


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

Okay, so if I build a four story house and all the other houses are only one story, does that mean that I live in a skyscraper?


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

The Potala Place, last rebuilt in 1645 is 656 ft high if you include the massive stone and copper base, and the tallest building for centuries.

Its basically a 13 storey 384 ft (117m) building resting on a massive base built into a hill. In all (hill+building) it rises over 1000ft above the valley.


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

hudkina said:


> Okay, so if I build a four story house and all the other houses are only one story, does that mean that I live in a skyscraper?


Well, in my opinion, that's entirely dependent on the time which it was built. Now it wouldn't be considered a skyscraper because there thousands of buildings that are taller. 2000 years ago though - then it would have been considered one simply because there wouldn't have been many buildings that were taller.


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## staff (Oct 23, 2004)

That fact that the 10 story steel framed buildings that were built in Chicago and New York in the late 1800s are called "the first skyscrapers" by some is ridiculous. 
Buildings that were many times as tall, occupiable, and "scraping the sky" have been built in Europe, the Middle East and Asia (China) thousands of years earlier.


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## tpe (Aug 10, 2005)

staff said:


> That fact that the 10 story steel framed buildings that were built in Chicago and New York in the late 1800s are called "the first skyscrapers" by some is ridiculous.
> Buildings that were many times as tall, occupiable, and "scraping the sky" have been built in Europe, the Middle East and Asia (China) thousands of years earlier.



But the steel frame allowed us to build structures to unprecedented heights and with relative ease. That's what the "modern" terminology captures first and foremost.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

hudkina said:


> It's not like it's against the law to call the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids of Giza skyscrapers... You can call them whatever you want.
> 
> It's like trying to discern the first "Rock and Roll" song. The term "Rock and Roll" was coined in the 50's, but that style of music is heavily influenced by earlier Rhythm and Blues and Country. There's not really any one song you can go back to and say that was the first "Rock and Roll" song. You can however go back and look at which songs first used electric guitars or had a steady drum beat, etc.




If there isn't one song you can't go back to and say it was the first rock and roll one, no need to find a 19th century country band who for the first time used binary rhythms and call it the first rock and roll song... 










Even if these old medieval residential towers did not use steel frames, they are much more skscrapers than this


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## mbuildings (May 6, 2007)

first skyscraper in south america:

The Salvo Palace (1928, 100m), in Montevideo (uruguay's capital)


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## WrightTurn (Nov 7, 2008)

city_thing said:


> Isaidso is very correct in his ideas.
> 
> I think the term 'skyscraper' needs to be boiled down to get an answer to this question. It basically just refers to any human built structure that purposefully designed and constructed with height being a priority.
> 
> ...


Because a skyscraper provides usable space for modern secular functions at each level. The Cathedral's towers do not. The HIB is entirely a different sort of building serving an entirely different--and modern--need. To deny this seems bizarre.

The skyscraper seems very much an American development. It was certainly identified as such by European writers and travelers back during the 1870s and 1880s--seen as a symbol for some of Yankee ingenuity and by others as a sign of dollar worship.


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## girlicious_likeme (Jun 12, 2008)

Hay River, Northwest Territories: my birthplace. 

a town of only 3,500 people. 2nd largest in the NWT. a rail town and a riverport, but set to become a boomtown. 
The first skyscraper here is the 16-storey Mackenzie Place. 
It's the second tallest skyscraper in the NWT after some random apartment building in Yellowknife with 20 storeys.

credits to Scott Clouthier


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

WrightTurn said:


> Because a skyscraper provides usable space for modern secular functions at each level. The Cathedral's towers do not.


No, that's some contrived definition based on modern western thinking. Function has no bearing. If I build a loft in the spire part of a Cathedral, it suddenly becomes a skyscraper? That's just plain silly. What's next? What if 50 years from now office buildings are converted into buildings that only house machines and become devoid of humans, then what? Does the Sears Tower suddenly not count as a skyscraper? This is absurd. Function is irrelevant to whether a structure scrapes the sky. The word pertains to *form not function.*


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

WrightTurn said:


> Because a skyscraper provides usable space for *modern secular functions* at each level. The Cathedral's towers do not. The HIB is entirely a different sort of building serving an entirely different--and modern--need. To deny this seems bizarre.
> 
> The skyscraper seems very much an American development. It was certainly identified as such by European writers and travelers back during the 1870s and 1880s--seen as a symbol for some of Yankee ingenuity and by others as a sign of dollar worship.


So it can only be a skyscraper if it has modern and secular activities happening on its levels? :lol:

The cathedral (and older buildings - such as the ones in Yemen) were constructed with multiple levels for a variety of functions to be carried out in. What happens on those levels doesn't have to be "secular" or "modern" at all - what happens on the levels has nothing to do with anything and I'm really wondering why you'd make such an argument.

"skyscraper" refers to the height of the building, not its function. I thought that would be completely obvious, but evidently not.


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

It astonishes me how people fail to grasp supposedly simple concepts such as the word skyscraper referring to height. No wonder the world is such a mess. How are they supposed to deal with important complex issues like climate change when basic simple things like what a building is, causes confusion?


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

Canada's first office skyscraper, in Montreal. Built in 1888:


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## christos-greece (Feb 19, 2008)

*The first skyscraper*

The first skyscraper: Babel tower...


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## CityPolice (Sep 27, 2008)

at least we know what the first supertall was and what was the first building to have 100+ floors


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## ZZ-II (May 10, 2006)

yes, we know that. but it is not the issue of the thread how great you find NYC!


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## CityPolice (Sep 27, 2008)

ZZ-II said:


> yes, we know that. but it is not the issue of the thread how great you find NYC!


I never said anything about it being great. I never implied that. Is that envy i see.


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## ZZ-II (May 10, 2006)

no, but you indicated it. and you know i banned you because of something like that already one time.
and now back to topic


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## CityPolice (Sep 27, 2008)

ZZ-II said:


> no, but you indicated it. and you know i banned you because of something like that already one time.
> and now back to topic


wait no it was something else but anyway should skyscraper be defined by height and structure like the fact the whole building is full with floors and usable space.


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## artursiwy91 (Jan 24, 2007)

First skyscraper in central Europe is located in Katowice in Upper Silesia. It was modern building builded in 1934, it has 62m.


































Now, it needs renovation


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## cardiff (Jul 26, 2005)

The victoria tower in London (houses of parliament) has a cast iron core and rises to 12 stories with roughly 8 rooms per floor and was completed in 1860. This is all the criteria set out to be a 'modern' skyscrpaer so it is the first by those deffinitions. There is also the Royal liver building in Liverpool which was completed in 1911 and one of the first to be built of reinforced concrete, it stands at 13 floors.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

It's not a skyscraper but the first building in the world to use an iron frame construction is about 500 metres from my house. It's in a terrible state of disrepair but is scheduled to be renovated by English Heritage. It was constructed in 1796.


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## redstone (Nov 15, 2003)

Whats the name of that building?


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

^^ It's called the Ditherington Flax Mill


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

This thread is pointless. Stuff like this can only be settled by generally accepted agreements, _which is that the HIB is the first skyscraper._


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## dtzeigler (Jan 4, 2008)

philadweller said:


> I agree about elevators.
> 
> Yemen looks like an early (200 AD) Upper West Side.


I can't help but wonder where the bathrooms are...or are not.


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## Mscraper89 (Feb 14, 2008)

Actually the first skyscraper in Europe was built in* 1897 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands*. It's hight is 42 meters.


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## Resident (Aug 18, 2006)

You people are fools! Give it a rest.


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## whitefordj (Feb 18, 2006)

FIDEL CASTRO said:


> What about Babel?


sorry, that's a rocket launching pad


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## Basincreek (Mar 10, 2008)

This is insane that we are arguing over what is essentially a colloquialism.


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## Rinchinlhumbe (Dec 20, 2008)

Resident said:


> You people are fools! Give it a rest.


thanks for the information


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## fharz (Feb 24, 2009)

I see. by the way why its called skyscrapers? what does it mean? i am just curious.


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## wrabbit (May 14, 2005)

"Skyscraper", as a word, was adopted specifically to refer to the newfangled steel-frame office towers that were rising in cities like NYC and Chicago, beginning around the end of the 19th century. It was used to _distinguish_ them from all of the other tall things that had risen before. It was a whole new technology - a whole new way of building tall things. And it needed its own descriptive noun. Which is why a classic Chinese stupa or medieval cathedral can never, technically, be correctly called a skyscraper. It has nothing to do with how tall these other things are.


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## redstone (Nov 15, 2003)

Because the term "skyscraper" was first applied to such a building. 

Looking beyond the term "skyscraper", as what it was first implied, you might be able to consider the Asian pagodas, and the ancient towers of the Middle East as skyscrapers


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## kids (Dec 12, 2004)

Murray's Mill, Ancoats, manchester. built *1798*.










skyscraper? i don't think so.


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## Fuzzy Llama (Jan 24, 2009)

artursiwy91 said:


> First skyscraper in central Europe is located in Katowice in Upper Silesia. It was modern building builded in 1934, it has 62m.


It depends of definition of a skyscraper and Central Europe, but I don't agree. 1934 is awful late 

First skyscraper in Warsaw was Cedergren office (acquired later by PAST (Polish Telephone Joint-stock Company) and known today as the "PASTa") , designed by Bronisław Brochwicz-Rogoyski, completed in 1908. It was the highest building in Russian Empire (a history reminder - in 1908 Warsaw was still under Russian rule) and a highest residential building in Europe at this time . It is 58m tall. It played it's role and was seriously damaged in Warsaw Uprising. Its facade was slightly changed during the reconstruction.

Before 1914:









During the Uprising:









And today:


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