Activities: Learning from Home

The Museum’s menu of Past Programs features videos of authors’ talks, lectures, and symposia that explore tall buildings and cities – especially New York – from multiple perspectives. This page compiles past programs into curated series. Visit often to see what talk we’re featuring or follow a theme across several programs!

How tall is Supertall? The Skyscraper Museum sets its bar high: 1,250 feet/ 380 meters, the height of the Empire State Building. The popular benchmark of 300 meters – about 1,000 feet – favors round numbers, but represents a 19th-century standard, the Eiffel Tower. Today, 300 meters is fairly common, with more than 200 buildings of that height worldwide. But towers of 380 meters remain exceptional: our survey counts only 58.

This chart is an artifact of the 20th century that was updated in 2010 and in 2020. It was originally created by the Skyscraper Museum as a wall mural for its debut exhibition in 1997 and added as the first feature on our new website, which was one of the only 1.1 million registered sites in 1997. Then, the mural lineup ended at the right with the recently completed twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which were the only buildings on the chart that were not American. Indeed, in 1998, the title of “world’s tallest building” left the U.S. and has never returned.

The Skyscraper Museum has plenty of resources for continuing education at home for all grade levels, from elementary to high school. Every week, we’ll select one of our lesson plans and point to resources on our website, as well as activities designed to foster a love of architecture and cities.

Though the main event is in our gallery, the Museum preserves complete records of its past shows in an online version, not just through installation views, but displaying every image and label text! You can view more than 25 virtual exhibitions through this portal. Each one has a microsite with its own navigation menu that is archived on our original “legacy” website: you’ll notice a change in format, but you will find a wealth of history!

Our website offers access to the Museum’s collections and research projects through a wide range of online archives, interactive maps, and charts, photographs, and graphics that allow both time travel and explorations of skyscrapers both local and global. Students and amateurs alike can explore our archives of digitized documents, historic photographs, and more through innovative graphic interfaces in a wide range of projects.

Don’t know where to start? Why not play along with our online scavenger hunt? Learn new things and keep an eye out for clues as you explore our site. The featured hunt today is on TEN TOPS. Check back soon for a new scavenger hunt!