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 Chicago
Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper. The Home Insurance Building, completed in 1885, is regarded as the world's first skyscraper. This building used the steel-frame method, innovated in Chicago. It was originally built with 10 stories, a considerable height in the 1800s, to a height of , making it the tallest building in the world. It was later expanded to 12 stories with a height of . The building was demolished in 1931. New York City then began building skyscrapers as Chicago had done, and the two cities were virtually the only cities in the world with huge skylines for many decades. Chicago has always played a prominent role in the development of skyscrapers and three past buildings have been the tallest building in the United States. Being the inventor of the skyscraper, Chicago went through a very early high-rise construction boom that lasted from the early 1920s to the late 1930s, during which 11 of the city's 91 tallest buildings were constructed. The city then went through an even larger building boom that has lasted from the early 1960s. The tallest buildings are concentrated in various downtown districts such as the Loop, Streeterville, River North, the South Loop, and the West Loop. Other high-rises extend north along the waterfront into North Side districts such as the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Uptown and Edgewater. Some high-rises also extend south from downtown along the waterfront to South Side districts such as Kenwood, Hyde Park, and South Shore.