Thirteenth floor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Thirteenth floor (disambiguation).

Panel from an elevator with no 13th-floor button.

The levels of a multi-story building are numbered sequentially, from "one" or "ground" upwards. In some countries, the number 13 is considered unlucky and building owners will sometimes purposefully omit a floor so numbered. Hence, the 13th floor is given the number 14. Even landlords who are not themselves superstitious realize that the desirability of suites on a floor 13 might be compromised because of superstitious tenants, or commercial tenants who worry about losing superstitious customers. Based on an internal review of records, Dilip Rangnekar of Otis Elevators estimates that 85% of the buildings with their elevators do not have a named 13th floor.^[1] This is not to say they do not actually have a 13th floor but rather the floor is described in some other way in an attempt to deal with the superstition.

See sequence A011760 in OEIS for number series and graphs.

1 How it is done
2 Variant
3 Conspiracy theory
4 References
5 See also

[edit] How it is done

[edit] Skipped

Most commonly, it is skipped altogether. The floor numbered 14 is in fact the thirteenth floor, and 13 is skipped altogether on the elevator console. Any calculations involving the height of a building based on the height of a floor should take this into account.

[edit] 12A

Sometimes the floor is simply renumbered as 12a or 12b; this does not affect the numbers of the higher floors.^[2]

[edit] Special designations

Other buildings will often use names for certain floors to avoid giving a floor on the building the number 13 designation. One such example is the Radisson Hotel in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the 13th floor is called the Pool floor.

[edit] Uninhabited

Sometimes, the floor is put to some other use (see conspiracy theories, below).

[edit] Letter M

Because the letter M is the 13th letter in the English alphabet, some people may use a letter M as a substitute for the floor numbered 13, such as 12, M, 14, and so forth. In Richmond, Virginia, the Monroe Tower has a 13th floor, but it is used for mechanical equipment and is only accessible from the freight elevator or the stairs. The M designation on the elevator buttons of the freight elevator can also be construed as meaning the "Mechanical" level in this particular building, or as a "Mezzanine" level.

[edit] Variant

Panel from an elevator in a residential apartment building in Shanghai. Floors 4, 13 and 14 are missing.

Similarly, new buildings in some parts of China omit the fourth, fourteenth, twenty-fourth, etc. floors, as the word "four" (Hanzi: 四) sounds like "death" (死 – pronounced "sì" and "sǐ", respectively) in Mandarin, the predominant language for the country, and most other Chinese languages. A small number of buildings also follow the Western tradition of omitting the thirteenth floor, with the fourteenth floor immediately following the twelfth.

Although the Hanja for four and death are read identically in Korean, buildings in South Korea tend not to omit the fourth floor. However, newer buildings tend to label the fourth floor with the letter F, instead of the number 4.

[edit] Conspiracy theory

Some conspiracy theorists have suggested that the thirteenth floor in government buildings is not really missing, but actually contains top-secret governmental departments, or more generally that it is proof of something sinister or clandestine going on^{[citation needed]}. This implication is often carried over, implicitly or explicitly, into popular culture; for example in:

the film The Thirteenth Floor
the hidden research and development labs of Network 23 in the television program 'Max Headroom'
the top-secret research and development division of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the fifth book of the series, Mostly Harmless
the computer game Floor 13 by Virgin Interactive
the sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf where "floor 13" referred to a secret brig which was several decks high.

It is widely believed that Canary Wharf's One Canada Square houses a physical plant room on its level 13 but this is just another example of undeserved notoriety on the part of the 13th floor. One Canada Square's plant areas are in its basements (Levels B3 to M1) and above Level 50 (Level M2). The floor directly above level 12 is level 14.^{[citation needed]}

It should be noted that to place a floor between those accessible from an elevator, it is necessary to either take longer to travel between the neighboring floors, or accelerate, both of which would be noticed by the riders. It would also be noticeable from the exterior, requiring either an extra row of windows or a conspicuous gap between rows. Thus, it would make much more sense to build a secret floor as a basement.^{[citation needed]}