For a long time the tallest structure made by people was the Great Pyramid of Giza. It stood about 146 meters tall when it was new. It is a huge stone tomb for a king named Khufu, built more than 4,500 years ago. It held the record for more than 3,000 years. Then other towers took the title, one after another. The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., was built in two parts. Work stopped from 1854 to 1877 because of money problems and the American Civil War, and the stone tower was finished in 1884. It is 555 feet tall, and when it was finished it was the tallest building in the world.

When the Eiffel Tower opened in 1889 it was nearly 1,000 feet (about 300 meters) high. It was the first structure in the world to rise above both 200 and 300 meters. It was the tallest structure in the world from 1889 until 1930, when the Chrysler Building in New York City took the title. Skyscrapers use a steel or concrete frame. The outside walls hang from the frame like a curtain instead of holding up the building, which allows big windows. The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, finished in 1885, is often called the first skyscraper. It had 10 floors, and in 1857 the first safe passenger elevator had already made tall buildings practical.

The Empire State Building went up very fast, in just over a year. It is built from steel, limestone, granite and brick, and it was the world's tallest building for about forty years, from 1931 until the 1970s. The Sears Tower in Chicago, now named the Willis Tower, held the title from 1974 until 1998. The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were the world's tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004. They have a two-story skybridge on the 41st and 42nd floors. The bridge joins the two towers and gives people a way to escape from one tower to the other in an emergency. Taipei 101 passed them in 2004.

People who measure tall buildings count the height from the lowest main entrance up to the top of the building. A spire counts as part of the building, but an antenna or a flagpole does not. As of November 2026, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world, at 828 meters. It took about six years to build and opened in 2010.

Words to know

• skybridge: bridge between towers
• spire: pointed tower top
• curtain: hanging wall
• antenna: radio mast