NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Thirteenth floor

Generally, the floors of a building are numbered sequentially, from one or ground upwards. However, in some countries, including the United States and Canada, buildings will sometimes purposely omit the thirteenth floor, because in these countries, 13 is considered an unlucky number. 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. Download high resolution version (615x820, 70 KB) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Download high resolution version (615x820, 70 KB) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... A hardwood floor (parquetry) is a popular feature in many houses. ... Floor numbering is the numbering scheme used for a buildings floors; it varies depending on the level of the first floor in the and on the names given to the subterranean levels. ... See also Thirteen, a 2003 movie, 13 an album by British band Blur, Thirteen an album by Teenage Fanclub. ... Numerology is an arcane study of the purported mystical relationship between numbers and the character or action of physical objects and living things. ...

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). ImageMetadata File history File links No_13th_floor. ... ImageMetadata File history File links No_13th_floor. ... BASE jumping is the sport of using a parachute to jump from fixed objects. ...

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 APAC Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The building is 14 stories tall. However, the ground floor is called the Lobby. Because the city's downtown skywalk system connects to the building on the second floor, that floor is referred to as the Skywalk Floor. The third floor of the building is referred to as 1st Floor. The 13th floor is referred to as the 11th Floor. The top level—or the 14th floor—of the building is referred to as 12th Floor. City Hall, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Cedar Rapids is a city located in Linn County, Iowa. ... A skyway is a path that is traversed without touching the ground. ...

Not inhabited

Sometimes, the floor is put to some other use (see also conspiracy theories, below). For instance, the thirteenth floor of 1 Canada Square houses the air conditioning equipment and no rentable offices, though the owners insist that this is merely an architectural coincidence. 1 Canada Square building (centre) 1 Canada Square is the tallest building in London. ...

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" (both are pronounced "si") 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. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Mandarin, or Guanhua (Traditional Chinese: å®˜è©±; Simplified Chinese: å®˜è¯; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally official speech), or Beifanghua (Chinese: åŒ—æ–¹æ–¹è¨€; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally Northern Dialect(s)) is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. ...

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. It has been suggested that Sino-Korean be merged into this article or section. ...

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. This proposed logo for the Information Awareness Office (a US governmental agency) was dropped due to fears that its pseudo-Masonic symbolism would provoke conspiracy theories. ... Secret redirects here. ... Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in any given society. ... The Thirteenth Floor is also the title of a strip in the Scream! and Eagle comics. ... Max Headroom doing a promotion for Cinemax Max Headroom was the name of a fictional television character in the late 1980s and of the science fiction television series in which he starred. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Floor 13 is a single-player computer game set in the United Kingdom, where the player is the director of a secret governmental agency involved in clandestine domestic operations. ... Virgin Interactive was a successful and influential British video game publisher. ... This article describes the British science fiction comedy television series. ...

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. A set of elevators or lifts, in the lower level of a train station. ...

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