Hacker News Reader

Comment by pitaa | Hacker News Reader

This is a pet peeve of mine, and makes me want to scream every time I see some click bait about how much better roman concrete was. If their concrete was so great, where are the ruins of the toman skyscrapers?!? :)

View on HN

I think a big reason ancient towers didn't really exist is less because they couldn't be built, and more that nobody wanted to climb up 5 or 10 floors if they could avoid it. No sane person would go up and down 20 floors if they could avoid it.

The colosseum is 150 feet tall, which isn't exactly short. Beyond that point, I think a big problem is getting the resources up high enough to keep building, as well as convincing people to climb that far up.

The only multistory residential buildings of antiquity I know of is the old city of Sana'a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana%27a#Old_City Five to nine stories tall, made of rammed earth, not even concrete! (Not enough water for concrete in Yemen) Continuously inhabited for ~2500 years.

@idlewords went there back in 2014, before the Saudis invaded: http://idlewords.com/2014/07/sana_a.htm

Rome had multistorey (3 to 4 of them) residential buildings, and opposite to today, the lower floors were the prestige floors - less climbing, more robust materials. The top floors were generally poorly constructed, out of lightweight materials.

In Manhattan, buildings over 100yo have taller ceilings on the first couple floors (where the retail shops would be and the owners would live), and then low ceilings on the highest floors for the scriveners and production workers. Of course, it's an issue today when lots of software companies want light (i.e., high floor) and high ceilings.

People don't realize what a paradigm shifting technology elevators were.

The Secret Life of Machines - The Lift (Elevator):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBLa105TQeg

These were called insulae[1]. Part of the reason the lower floors were higher prestige was due to the constant risk of fire. In the event of a fire those on the upper floors were in a far worse position in terms of survival.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(building)

Appart from the the ground floor (for business), it wasn't until the invention of elevators that the top floors were made prestige floors. The bel étage or piano nobile [1] was the first floor above ground level (for relative privacy from the street level). Top floors were not penthouse flats they were attics or lower class housing [2]

The first proto skyscrapers were built in the late 19th century. The Equitable Life Assurance Building (1870) and the Home Insurance Building (1885) were office buildings. The idea of a Penthouse appartment [3] dates from the 1920s. And as buildings are only slowly built and renovated, the first floors were still prestige floors well into the 20th century.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_nobile

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambre_de_bonne

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penthouse_apartment

Yep, and the scheme remained more or less the same in Italy where traditional homes (for the wealthy) have been till the 1900's organized as follows:

At ground floor (usually with higher celings than the rest of the house) dining room, sitting room, library, study, most of the "luxury" (marble, columns, paneling, paintings, etc.) was there, as they were the only parts of the house that visitors would see.

In the basement the kitchen and cellar (where cook and other servants worked).

On first floor (what probably our US friends will call second) the bedrooms for the owners.

On second (last) floor, right under the roof, usually with a reduced height AND extremey cold in winter and extremely hot in summer, the servant quarters.

Thanks for the idlewords link. His writing is very capturing, I've been reading the blog for hours.

Maybe it's lightning?

The Yonging Pagoda was 138 metres high. It was destroyed in 534 when it was struck by lightning and caught fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongning_Pagoda

Another example of tall Roman buildings still standing today is Roman aqueducts.

Examples: http://0.tqn.com/d/ancienthistory/1/S/U/I/Rome_5.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z_W3YC_mG0Y/Tb55AUhJ0dI/AAAAAAAAAE...

And, of course, the Pantheon, at 43 meters. It was the largest dome in the world for over 1300 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_domes#Worldwid...)

The Nerja Aqueduct was built in the 19th century. But yes roman aqueducts were impressive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard was 48.8m high (160feet).

The skyscraper was primarily made practical by elevators.

Why would you need to build skyhigh, if there is still plenty of land available for low-rise building?

Why would you live in a city when there's plenty of suburban sprawl?

There are lots of reasons of efficiency to build up even if you can build out.

Romans had neither elevators or air conditioning. They did build on a fairly large scale though. I believe 150 foot tall structures were not uncommon, and those are the ones still standing.

That's simply a false dichotomy. Many of the world's great cities still mostly enforce height limits that the Romans could have built to. Because actually living like an ant among 100 story skyscrapers is not what most humans want. A medium density and mixed use city of max ~150 foot high buildings has very few disadvantages and analogizing it to USA suburban sprawl is just laughable nonsense. Have you ever been to e.g. Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Florence ... most of Western Europe?

Also, less than 150 years ago, there was one seventh of the population on this planet than there is now. In fact, during the time of the Roman Empire there were only 300 million people on this rock, 45 million or so were within the Empire[1].

Skyscrapers are only a good solution if you have over-population. No-one in their right mind would ever want to live or work in one if they didn't have to.

[1] http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/killing-jesus/articles... (first Google hit)

Ancient Rome grew beyond 1 million inhabitants in the 2d century. Chang'an (Xi'an), China in the 8th century, Bagdad around the 10th century. There were big cities before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through...

They were banned by building codes - insulae were limited to something like five stories due to fires. A problem that is tragically still relevant.

plumbing I think is also a major reason as well as why not just spread out. They werent as geographically contained as we are.

Engineers are expensive! Residential housing would have been wooden and (relatively) temporary.

who wants skyscrapers in absence of elevators?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com