Why No Number 13?

[chacoguy]

@Terrifel

From the Wikipedia article on Thirteenth Floor:If anybody would know, you’d figure it would be the elevator people.

Personally I like it. It’s a harmless, colorful little bit of architectural tradition, like entombing human corpses inside a bridge foundation.

They’re not corpses when they go in there.:eek:

[Sternvogel]

Here’s Ogden Nash’s take on the subject.

[Sunspace]

I’ve heard a few rumours that some new buildings in Toronto are built without a floor numbered 13 to appease the Anglo superstition and without floors numbered with 4 to appease the Asian superstition. Must make the numbering interesting: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19… …38, 39, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56…

Maybe they double up on 8’s and other digits: 1, 2, 3, 8/2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 8+5, 72, 15, 16, 17, 18… …38, 39, 85, 85+1, 212, 192+5, 222, 86, 232, 20*2+7, (2[sup]2[/sup])!*2, 7[sup]2[/sup], 50, 51…

Getting to the right floor could be a whole new kind of mathematical skill-testing question!

[gallows_fodder]

…*The number four means nothing to me
but the number four means death to Chinese.
Number seven is lucky in Japan. Here we don’t give a damn.

But on the elevator, no thirteenth floor.
On the elevator, no thirteenth floor.
Thirteenth, going up, going up, going up…*
–Morphine, “Slow Numbers”

[ParentalAdvisory]

@Leaper

Like this?

Huh?

This?

@me

…to put a stop to this nonsensical practice on the basis safety, while having a good understanding that floor 13, is floor 13 and nothing else.

I could imagine a scenario with floors full of fire and smoke, while fire fighters try to determine where people need to be rescued. To decide what is floor 13 and what is floor 14 seems to be an unnecessary risk to take in this regard. Especially since you may not know what building follows this silly, I don’t know, rule, code whatever… I’m finding it kinda odd that I would be challenged on this. I mean, what’s more strange here, a building policy set to unlabel a legitimate floor based on unfounded spirits or chance, or me saying floor 13 should stay and be labeled floor 13 to avoid confusion should an emergency occur?

[RealityChuck]

@levdrakon

Yes! The hidden floor the elevators don’t stop at seems a common theme. I vaguely recall a Babylon 5 ep that involved a hidden level that didn’t show up on the blueprints. Don’t know if it was 13 or not though.

“Gray 17 is Missing” – no 13.

Hotels and apartment buildings in the US tend to avoid a 13th floor. I think there was a fear that you couldn’t rent rooms on a 13th floor, so they just skipped it.

However, commercial buildings have no problem with it. The Empire State Building, for instance, has a 13th floor (though it seems to be currently empty).

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@jali

In my humble opinion, I can’t, for the life of me, understand why, buildings in the USA never list a 13th floor.

There’s a 13th floor in every building reaching at least 14 floors, but instead we delude ourselves.

Are there that many people who are afraid of the number 13?

It annoys me that we can put a man in space and communicate on the internet, but we pretend there’s no 13th floor.

In a country where some people do manage to make a living, and rent storefronts, as foretunetellers? :rolleyes:

(This isn’t one of those things that make me particularly proud of my country. And I don’t think most Americans are that superstitious, but the builders probably assume that a significant enough number of prospective tenants in a high rise are that afraid.)

[Sunspace]

@RealityChuck

The Empire State Building, for instance, has a 13th floor (though it seems to be currently empty).

That’s what They tell us.

[Green_Bean]

This is embarrassing, and I don’t think I’ve ever admitted it before, but I suffer from a mild case of triskadeca…well, not phobia, exactly. I guess it’s a case of triskadeca-slight-unease.

For example, I was formatting a spreadsheet in Excel today. I wanted to equalize several column widths to equal the widest one. The widest one was something like 12.79 wide, so I was going to set them all to 13…but then I felt that slight unease and set them at 12.79. :o

@levdrakon

I’ve always liked the idea there is a 13th floor, but you need special access to get to it, and there’s lots of secret things going on there.

Ooh…I like that!

[Uncle_Brother_Walker]

@levdrakon

I’ve always liked the idea there is a 13th floor, but you need special access to get to it, and there’s lots of secret things going on there.

I live on the 13th floor in my building (check the location tag).

I also work in a 16-floor building. We have a 13th floor, but I’ve never been on it. Nobody I have to deal with in my day-to-day stuff.

And yes, there ARE lots of secret things going on up here. You need special clearance to enter.

And you must bring offerings.

[Leaper]

@ParentalAdvisory

I could imagine a scenario with floors full of fire and smoke, while fire fighters try to determine where people need to be rescued. To decide what is floor 13 and what is floor 14 seems to be an unnecessary risk to take in this regard.

Isn’t that what signs are for? Medical professionals would, of course, take the elevator, it being quicker and there being no fire. As for firefighters, even in non-emergency situations, it’s really easy to lose track of what floor you’re on while going up endless flights of stairs in a generally featureless vertical corridor. Because of that, I can’t imagine that firefighters in the middle of a serious blaze determine floors when going up stairs by counting.

“Okay… cough floor nine… cough ten… (Watch those pipes! They’re red hot!) eleven… cough (You’re okay, sir! Get down those stairs as fast as you can!) cough Hey, Bill, what was the last number I said?”
“I don’t remember!”
“Damn, back down the stairs, we gotta start over again!”

Besides which, if it ever were a concern, an inevitable huge lawsuit would’ve made the practice non-existent by now. I just can’t fathom this being any sort of serious problem.

[Snnipe_70E]

@jali

Go into any high rise and try to find the 13th floor.

Nonexistant.

Both of the buildings that I maintain have a 13th floor.

[Asimovian]

I worked on the 13th floor of my office building before we moved. The building we’re in currently has a 13th floor. I can also tell you absolutely that both Federal courthouses and the state criminal courthouse in Downtown LA all have 13th floors. I have been in buildings where the 13th floor was skipped on the elevators, but I find such a practice extraordinarily silly.

I’m certain the fact that I was born on Friday the 13th has nothing to do with anything.

[madmonk28]

In No Country for Old Men, doesn’t Woody Harrelson’s character tell the boss that his building is missing a floor? I think he says something like, I counted them from the outside, but the elevator has one more floor than I counted. The boss kind of ignores him.

I believe he was making reference to the numbering scheme on many elevators.

[Freudian_Slit]

My building has a 13th floor (I’m on it right now, oooh!) but the OP is right. Most others just leave it off. Kind of stupid considering it’s still there; it just has a different number. It would be creepier if the building did have a thirteenth floor and no one used it, and it was empty and the ghosts all gravitated to it. But they don’t–there’s always a 13th floor in use. Everyone just pretends it isn’t there.

[PopeJewish]

@madmonk28

In No Country for Old Men, doesn’t Woody Harrelson’s character tell the boss that his building is missing a floor? I think he says something like, I counted them from the outside, but the elevator has one more floor than I counted. The boss kind of ignores him.

I believe he was making reference to the numbering scheme on many elevators.

I thought it was the opposite, that he counted them from the outside and inside it was missing a floor (like the elevator only had 32 floors but there were 33 if counted from the outside, for example). I could be mistaken, though, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna watch that movie again

[Audrey_Levins]

Things like this always make me a bit wistful that I am so lacking in any kind of superstition.

I’m like Fox Mulder. I WANT to believe.

I just can’t.

shakes head sadly at missing 13th floors everywhere

[Martiju]

@Leaper

I can’t imagine that firefighters in the middle of a serious blaze determine floors when going up stairs by counting.

“Okay… cough floor nine… cough ten… (Watch those pipes! They’re red hot!) eleven… cough (You’re okay, sir! Get down those stairs as fast as you can!) cough Hey, Bill, what was the last number I said?”
“I don’t remember!”
“Damn, back down the stairs, we gotta start over again!”

Not a big deal, but it’s also conceivable that the firefighters arrive at the building to be told ‘they’re trapped on the 14th floor’. I think the point is you don’t really want to waste much time working out whether the 14th is really the 13th…

[Marley23]

@Martiju

Not a big deal, but it’s also conceivable that the firefighters arrive at the building to be told ‘they’re trapped on the 14th floor’. I think the point is you don’t really want to waste much time working out whether the 14th is really the 13th…

Skipping the 13th floor is so common that I don’t see any confusion occurring.

[Algorithm]

@Sunspace

I’ve heard a few rumours that some new buildings in Toronto are built without a floor numbered 13 to appease the Anglo superstition and without floors numbered with 4 to appease the Asian superstition. Must make the numbering interesting: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19… …38, 39, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56…

I stayed at a hotel in Vancouver, BC, and the floor numbering skipped 4 and 13, and I believe 3 and 23 as well - I remember at least 4 total were skipped, just not sure on the last two. It may have been the Ramada downtown.