List of tallest buildings
The international non-profit organization Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) was formed in 1969 and announces the title of "The World's Tallest Building" and sets the standards by which buildings are measured. It maintains a list of the 100 tallest completed buildings in the world. The organization currently ranks Burj Khalifa in Dubai as the tallest at . The CTBUH only recognizes buildings that are complete however, and some buildings included within the lists in this article are not considered finished by the CTBUH.
Empire State Building
According to "The New York Times", builders and real estate speculators predicted that the Empire State Building would be the world's tallest building "for many years", thus ending the great New York City skyscraper rivalry. At the time, most engineers agreed that it would be difficult to build a building taller than , even with the hardy Manhattan bedrock as a foundation. (Technically, it was believed possible to build a tower of up to , but it was deemed uneconomical to do so, especially during the Great Depression.) As the tallest building in the world, at that time, and the first one to exceed 100 floors, the Empire State Building became an icon of the city and, ultimately, of the nation.