13th floor

Factual Questions
1

Well I was quite dismayed to receive an e-mail from SD staff saying that Cecil had declined to answer this question. (Sob.)

The message suggested I ask it here, which I didn’t do because I assumed that this board, like 99.99% of other boards, would be full of morons who would post nothing but useless uninformed speculation.

So imagine my surprise when, months and months later, I actually look at the board and find that not only is the moron rate well below 99%, but well over half the words in half the posts are not misspelled. (As a professional editor, misspellings and incorrect punctuation drive me crazy.)

So, having finally gotten over the devastation of being rejected by Cecil, I thought I might as well ask the question here.

Many tall buildings don’t have a 13th floor. Or rather they *have *a 13th floor, but they call it the 14th floor. My question is: is this because, even in the 21st century there are still lots of superstitious people who would refuse to work in an office or stay in a hotel room on the 13th floor?

Or is this a hold over from an earlier time when people felt this way, and today’s landlords and building managers are too conservative, scared, or lazy to take a chance now?

Or has no one ever bothered to test the proposition that people would balk at a 13th floor, but just figured it’s simpler to call it the 14th floor and leave it at that.

In other words, was there ever a concrete reason not to label the 13th floor accurately, and how recently has this been demonstrated still to be true?

I was also going to ask Cece what percentage of buildings with 13 or more floors don’t have a labelled 13th floor; whether the practice is more common in certain countries or regions; and who gets to decide: the architect, the landlord, the guy who installs the buttons on the elevator?

Does anyone have any informed answers to these vitally important questions? Thanks.

2

I work at different hospitals in Oregon. I can tell you that in the past two places I have worked, neither one had a room number 13. The first place was a labor and delivery suite that is about 16 months old. The nurses told me that it was a decision made by all of them that room 13 should be eliminated (or rather should be labelled 14). I’m now working in an ICU with 13 beds- rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14! The philosophy is that no one would want to have a baby in room 13 or have an ill loved one in the dreaded room 13! Superstitious freaks. (Of course medical personnel are really superstitious as a general rule. You are chastised for ever saying the ward is the “Q-word” (quiet).)

3

I’d guess that people are still superstitious. I’ve had more than a few people express surprise that in the hospital where I work all of the wards big enough have a room 13.

4

[small hijack]

How soon after you asked the question did you get the rejection ?

Just interested, as I never got any answer at all when I asked one.
[/small hijack]

5

My building has a 13th floor, and it’s marked and numbered as such. But our freight elevator’s floor display (which lights up the number of the floor you’re on) has a numbering scheme that skips 13 and is off by one on the top few floors.

Skipping 13 is widely, but not universally, observed.

6

Having worked in construction on a building that was more than 14 floors, it’s the owner of the building who get to decides such things.

Heck, if the guy wants to have ten first floors he can go ahead and do it. The building I’m working on right now goes - G2, G1, 1, 2, 3, 4. Seriously, the world can’t even decide if the first floor is the floor on the ground or the first floor from the ground level so for all practical purposes nobody even really knows which floor is the 13th floor.

My best guess is that it is simply a convention that is easy enough to do in the construction phase so people just go ahead and do it without all that much thought.

7

Forget 13 – my building doesn’t have a 14th floor either.

Western superstitions, Eastern superstitions, the owners of my building cater to them all. I’m surprised they have mirrors in the elevators.

8

[Allen Luden]

The password is; triskaidekaphobia.

[/Allen Luden]

9

It often has to do with the purpose of the building. The Empire State Building, for instance, has a 13th floor (there’s currently a space vacant in 1310, if you’re looking for office space), and those buildings that are primarily business addresess supposedly don’t have any problems with it.

Hotels and apartment buildings avoid a 13th floor.

10

I think RealityChuck is correct. Most office buildings I’ve worked in or visited have a 13th floor labeled as such. Hotels generally don’t. I can’t speak for apartments.

Why don’t hotels? Persistent superstition I suppose. Heck, people believe in astrology, Bigfoot, and the Roswell UFO. Why wouldn’t they continue to believe that the number 13 is unlucky.

Regarding your question of when did it become acceptable for some buildings to label their 13th floor… I have no idea.

11

I suspect it really comes down to money. A 13[sup]th[/sup] floor labeled as “14[sup]th[/sup]” would have a normal occupancy rate, whereas a 13th floor labeled as “13[sup]th[/sup]” would undoubtedly have a lower-than-average occupancy rate.

12

Your answer is more accurate than mine Crafter_Man. I don’t think hotel owners are superstitious, just their guests. Hotels don’t have a 13th floor because many people wouldn’t stay there. Economics. And people wouldn’t stay there because of their persistent superstitions.

13

Of course, as Shelley Berman notes, tall hotels usually have two “13th floors” which aren’t labelled as such. When 13 is skipped, then the 14th floor is actually the 13th floor by numbering scheme. But many hotels also have what’s called the “mezzanine”, followed by the 2nd floor, where the mezzanine is physically the 2nd floor. That makes the 12th floor the real 13th floor, and the building doubly-unlucky.

14

Just wondering if there’s any additional benefit by taking advantage of skipping the 13th floor, it appears to the unsuspecting that there are more floors than are really there. Not sure what good would come of that subtle type of deception, but you never know.

15

It’s not a benefit, but there is an urban legend about a guy who bungee jumped from the top of a tall building. He calculated the building’s height based on the number of floors, but he forgot that there wasn’t a 13th floor, so he made his bungee cord too long. Splat.

16

I just want to point out that in my observation I’ve only seen this particular superstition make its way into building (and airline seat and ticket designation) in the US.

However, in Hong Kong (and to a lesser extent in China), buildings rarely have a fourth floor, for similar reasons.

17

I think it has to do with current superstitions. In Canada, we have huge swaths of city where Asian’s predominate. In Condo’s in these areas, the floors exclude both 13 and any number with a 4 in it (4, 14, 24).

18

I seriously doubt that hotels would suffer economically due to the presence of a 13th floor. It would simply be a manner of rearranging the guests so that, in a case of full occupancy, people with no objection to the 13th floor would be placed there. Not very difficult.

19

FYI, the aversion of a 4th floor to Asians has to do with the similarity of the word for “4” and the word for “death” in some Asian languages (I think originating from Chinese).

20

I assume all buildings have a 13th floor here (France). At least, I never noticed a building which had no 13th floor. I always heard the lack of 13th floor was an american thing (though I just read that apparently it’s the same in Asia).

By the way, a 13th american floor is an european 12th floor, since we call 1st floor what is called 2nd floor in the US (the ground level doesn’t count). So if you end up in an european 13th floor, you could feel safe, since it will actually be an american 14th floor…