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The Skyscrapers of New York. Extremely tall buildings are such a common thing in New York City that sometimes passengers on the street feel like they can't see the sky. A boat tour along New York Harbor offers the chance to see many historic skyscrapers. New York City no longer holds the record for the tallest building, but the history of the skyscraper is strongly linked to the city. Throughout history, people have been building as tall as their technology and knowledge allowed. Structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt are a few examples. Skyscrapers as we know them began in the 19th century as technology changed and made larger buildings possible. Buildings made from wood, like the Philadelphia City Hall, needed extremely thick walls at the base – up to 7 meters in some cases! – to hold the height of the building. For modern skyscrapers they needed steel. The first steel skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1885. It wasn’t long before cities like New York and Chicago began competing for the record for the world’s tallest building. In New York the American Surety Building was the first proper skyscraper. Its construction started in 1885. Several New York City buildings held the record for the world’s tallest skyscraper after that, for example the Empire State Building in 1931, and One World Trade Center starting in 1971. Today’s current champion has been the Burj Khalifa in Dubai since 2010. Let´s look at some of the skyscrapers in more detail: With 102 floors, the Empire State Building was the tallest in the world for four decades. This beautiful structure is one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and its name also serves as a nickname for the city. At the moment, the tallest building in New York is the One World Trade Center. This 541 meters tall masterpiece was built as a memorial for the original World Trade Center destroyed in a terrorist attack. For the people who built the skyscrapers, life was very hard. They had no safety equipment, or even helmets. There was nothing between them and an 85 meters fall. One slip... and they were dead. The worker William Starrett said: "The thing I hate most is to take a new man with me when we are near the top. They all get either used to it, or get killed. The horrible reality of dead bodies reminds us that we are fighting something like a war against the forces of nature", Two out of five die or get hurt during the job. They have an 8 hours working day, take meals when they can, and there's no toilet breaks. And the pay, at four dollars a day, is only the double of what a normal worker on the street gets - not enough for the risk. But the new space was needed. At the end of the 19th century, America's urban population had increased 87 times and many people were looking for places to live and to work.