History of the world's tallest buildings
The buildings that were the tallest secular skyscrapers, which excludes religious buildings, were:
The list of tallest buildings is based on the default metric of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), that of measuring to the highest architectural element. Other criteria would generate a different list. Shanghai World Financial Center is not on the above list, but it surpassed Taipei 101 in 2008 to become the building with the highest occupied floor. Using the criteria of highest tip (including antennae), the World Trade Center in New York City was the world's tallest building from 1972 to 2000, until the Sears Tower in Chicago (which already had a higher occupied floor than the World Trade Center) had its antenna extended to give that building the world's tallest tip; a title it held until the 2010 completion of Burj Khalifa. Petronas Towers and Taipei 101 were never the world's tallest buildings by the highest–tip criteria.
List of tallest buildings in New York City
The Empire State Building stood as the tallest building in the world from its completion until 1972, when the 110-story North Tower of the original World Trade Center was completed. At , The World Trade Center held the title until the completion of the 108-story Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower) in Chicago in 1974. The World Trade Center towers were destroyed by terrorist attacks in 2001, and the Empire State Building regained the title of tallest building in the city. It remained the tallest until April 2012, when the construction on One World Trade Center surpassed it. The fifth-tallest building in New York is the Bank of America Tower, which rises to , including its spire. If the Twin Towers were still standing today, they would be the third- and fourth-tallest buildings in the city, or second and third assuming the new buildings would not have been built. Only 432 Park Avenue is taller.