How do tall buildings stay up? A tall building stands on a strong frame of steel beams and columns, like a skeleton. The weight of the building pushes down on its columns. The columns are squeezed. Steel is very strong. That is why engineers use steel beams and columns to hold up most skyscrapers. The frame is what keeps a tall building up.

Before steel frames, tall buildings had thick, heavy masonry walls. Those walls limited how high a building could go. A steel frame carries the weight instead of the walls. So the outer wall can have many windows. Stone walls could not have that many windows.

Elevators let people ride up tall buildings, so builders could make buildings taller. In 1857 the first passenger elevator was put in a New York store. Elisha Otis showed a safe elevator. He stood on the platform while its rope was cut. The platform held.

Steel frames and elevators together made the first skyscraper possible, in Chicago in 1885. The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, 10 stories and 138 feet tall, is called the first skyscraper. People used the word skyscraper for very tall buildings starting in the 1880s.

A building needs a foundation. It goes down into the ground and holds the building up. Where the ground near the surface is too weak, people use deep foundations. They carry the load down to stronger layers. Piles are long, slender columns of steel, concrete or sometimes timber. They are put deep into the ground.

Compression squeezes a material. Tension stretches it. Concrete is strong when it is squeezed, but weak when it is pulled apart. To help with tension, people put steel bars inside concrete. In a truss the top is usually squeezed and the bottom is stretched. A truss is a frame made of connected triangles.

A building's core is a tube in the middle. It holds the elevators, stairs and pipes. The Sears Tower in Chicago, now called the Willis Tower, was built as a bundle of nine tubes. The design is called a bundled tube.

Wind pushes on tall buildings, and they sway a little. Taipei 101 has a huge pendulum at the top that weighs 660 tonnes. It swings the opposite way from the tower, which helps cancel out the sway. This was true in November 2026.

The Empire State Building has 102 stories and is 1,250 feet tall. It was the tallest building in the world for about 40 years after it opened in 1931. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai has 163 floors and is 828 meters tall. In November 2026 it is the tallest building in the world.

Words to know

• masonry: stone or brick
• pendulum: swinging weight
• foundation: building's base
• truss: triangle frame
• tension: stretching force

The short version

A tall building stands on a strong steel frame of beams and columns, like a skeleton. The weight pushes down on the columns, and the foundation carries the load into the ground. Steel frames and elevators together made the first skyscraper possible, in Chicago in 1885.

Quick facts

• A steel frame carries a tall building's weight, so its outer wall can have many windows.
• Where the ground near the surface is too weak, builders use deep foundations that carry the load down to stronger layers.
• Concrete is strong when squeezed but weak when pulled, so builders put steel bars inside it.
• As of November 2026 the Burj Khalifa, 828 meters tall with 163 floors, is the tallest building in the world.