Back in my college days at Northwestern (the alma mater, if I am not mistaken, of your faithful editor), a rumor circulated that the Technological Institute was the third-largest low-rise office building in the world, after the Pentagon and the Kremlin. I have my doubts. What’s the straight dope – is there any measure by which this was ever true?
Your pal,
Randy Seltzer
Addendum for SDMB discussion: there are tons of buildings with more floor space than all three, but they're mostly high rises, or not office buildings. See list [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_buildings). There are definitely a few on that list that seem to qualify though. It might depend on what you consider to be a "low rise," though I'm pretty sure that the standard definition is anything that tops out under 80 feet. And it might depend on your definition of "office building." Also, a tiny bit of research indicates that the Kremlin isn't that big compared to other really big buildings, so that part of the rumor should be pretty easy to debunk. I guess I'm wondering whether this has even the remotest basis in fact, or if it's just a typical college urban legend.
Ed: Hmmm - I forgot about the tower portion of Magnuson: “The tallest wing in the complex is the 17-story Aagaard Tower (BB-Wing).” While the vast majority seems like it would fit under your 80-foot limit, this might disqualify it.
Yeah, I saw that too. It’s possible the high-rise portion was added at some point after the rest of the building had already surpassed Tech in size. But part of answering this question would have to be figuring out the timing of various building expansions.
I don’t see how it could even make the top 20. Think of MIT, which was basically all in a single building, or of various sprawling hospitals, universities, and other institutions. The Federal Triangle area of Washington has a dozen buildings that large, and the Department of Agriculture across the Mall another huge one.
I spent my Grad School years at NU’s Tech Institute. I would hardly call it an “office building.” It was chock full of lecture halls and laboratories more than offices. It was big and confusing, though.
Another NU grad here - Tech is big, but not that big, and like the previous poster I have trouble calling it an office building. Of course I was not a student of the technology school, so most of my exposure to the building was the big lecture halls.
There was also a rampant rumor that when they designed the library at NU, they forgot to factor in the weight of the books. So now the building is slowly sinking into the ground…
Strange thing is, I’ve heard that same rumor on most every campus I’ve studied/worked on, which is a lot of them.
1998 grad here. The version of the rumor I heard was that Tech had the second-highest amount of corridor space next to the Pentagon (or something to that effect.) Googling, I found this article from 2008 predicting what NU will look like in 50 years, referencing that rumor:
HMM Libraries sinking buildings? Back in the day, I heard that the Chicago Public Library used the Goldblatt’s building (while constructing new digs) because books weighed so much, not many buildings were candidates??? Is this another urban legend??
CPL never used the Goldblatt’s building. In the late 80s they planned to convert the building (now DePaul Center) into the central library, but the Chicago Sun-Times raised a big stink about how it wasn’t world-class enough to reuse a former department store. One of the issues they tried to raise was floor loading, though I don’t think the Harold Washington Library Center was built with any greater capacity. In fact, the microforms cabinets have to be carefully located, as I understand it.
In the real world, bookshelf capacity has never been a particular concern given CPL’s anemic collection.
As an engineer, I’ve gotta say that the “sinking library” story kills me every time (although usually it’s the architect who’s given the dubious credit of not anticipating book weights). If you’re designing a library, you’re going to take into account the weight of books, storage, etc. It’s just part of the job. To not do so would be so basic an error that it just strikes me as nearly impossible - like an architect “forgetting” to put windows in a building, or a truck driver “forgetting” how to drive. Slightly off topic, but the story makes me laugh every time I see it repeated.
The headquarters of the National Security Agency is in the running, certainly. I don’t know its square footage off the top of my head, but it has an unobstructed corridor running from one end of the building to the other, a quarter-mile away. You can stand in the door at one end and see light from the door at the other end.
I have been lost in there many times over the years. I had no idea it was the largest.
I was very impressed as some of the straight hallways appear to be over 1/2 a mile long.
Not to resurrect my own zombie, but there’s been a development.
I went on the wonderful Chicago architecture boat tour a few weeks ago, and the docent stated precisely this same factoid (i.e. 3rd-largest low-rise building in the world after the Pentagon and the Kremlin) with regard to Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. What’s the straight dope? Are there dozens of buildings out there that are somehow tied for this honor? Why are so many in Chicago?
Some points:
I’m not sure this qualifies as “low-rise,” since it’s 340 feet tall. In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, since the most generous definition of “low-rise” that I can find is “under 120 feet.”
It was veritably the largest building in the world at the time of its construction in terms of floor space, at 4 million square feet. The Pentagon, built about 10 years later, has 6.5 million square feet.
Nope. In terms of floor space, the worlds largest building is Dubai International airport, at 12.76 million square feet. According to Wikipedia, the Pentagon ranks #11 and the Kremlin doesn’t even make the list. The inclusion of the latter in the urban legend is puzzling since the Kremlin is actually a complex of almost a dozen different buildings, and even combined they’re not particularly large.
Chicago’s Merchandise Mart is a 25 story building, so I’m not sure that qualifies as “low-rise.” And if you remove the height requirement it’s relative paltry compared to those huge shopping centers in Thailand or the Flower Mart in the Netherlands.