Defining the Top.

I see there’s another Civil War brewing in America, only this time it’s an internecine Yankee affair between New York and Chicago. It’s all to do with which of them has America’s tallest building. Well, you know what them damn Yankees are like – always have to have the tallest buildings, the longest cars, the widest billboards and the highest per capita cholesterol levels – so this is serious, man!

So here’s the story for those who haven’t heard it already:

New York has a new skyscraper, which, at 1776 feet (deliberately contrived, I suspect, to give them the moral high ground in the ensuing argument) now puts the Big A top of the list again after having to grudgingly bow the knee to the Windy City for a few years. Ah, but…

The only reason it gets the record is because it has a whopping great ‘spire’ on the top, and the question is inevitably being posed: ‘when is a spire not a spire, but an antenna?’ Antennae don’t count, you see, because the rules require that the height of a building be determined by its ‘architectural top,’ and an antenna isn’t part of the architecture.

‘It’s an antenna,’ say the Chicago folks.

‘Oh no it isn’t, it’s a spire,’ say the New Yorkers.

I gather it’s to be decided by a panel of experts led by Simon Cowell in November (I made one bit of that up.) So, do I care? Well, sort of. I haven’t entirely hidden my sneaking regard for New York on this blog, partly because a few excellent people of my acquaintance live in or near there, and partly because it was presumably where my great grandfather got off the boat when he escaped his fearsome wife (my great grandmother?! Phew!) But I expect Chicago is a very nice place with a few excellent people of its own, so maybe I shouldn’t take sides.

Tell you what it reminds me of, though. There was a mountain somewhere in Wales that got downgraded to a hill by the Ordnance Survey because it was found to be marginally under the 3,000ft qualifying height. The locals went and built a whopping great cairn on the top and got it upgraded again. It strikes me that a cairn is no more part of the mountain than an antenna is part of the architecture, but it’s heart warming when the ordinary folks win one over the bureaucrats for a change. It is.

There was a film made about it called The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. It’s moderately amusing in parts, especially since one of the leading Welsh locals was played by a leading Irish actor. Them Irish get everywhere, don’t they? I gather there are even a few of them in New York.