Sun, 15:07: Encore presentation! Dad and Sherri making out in the middle of their 35th anniversary dinner last night. 💏 https://t.co/vA10GSwQE4
Sun, 21:00: Since going to the observatory on Friday I have been kind of obsessing over the exact floor count of Seattle’s fabled Smith Tower.
It turns out the Smith Tower is fairly unique in the amount of exaggeration and misinformation that has been spread regarding its official height (462 ft, not 500 ft or even higher as initially reported in the 1910s), and specifically its floor count.
I am rather eager to get to the bottom of the truth of the floor count, and I feel like I've gotten fairly close. Even though Emporis.com has long listed the floor count at 36, that essentially counts this entire pyramid top as one single floor, above the 35th floor observatory. That really makes no sense.
And: I actually asked the elevator operator about this on our way down. I could swear he said the apartment has no longer been occupied since 2017, and maintenance people gaining access to the space have had to "sign NDAs." It did not sound like this guy had ever seen the space himself, but he said there is a spiral staircase that twists around enough to count up to the 42 floors that have long been claimed on plaques mounted to the building outside. How that math works, I don't know.
But! It turns out it's not hard to find online stories about Petra Franklin, the woman who has lived up there with her kids for many years, and this King 5 story about her was published just last September (2018). And, honestly, at the beginning of that clip even her description of the stories making it to 42 is a bit shady: "and then there's forty, forty-one, and 42 is the globe." What? The diagram they show is from outside and gives no sensible explanation of how "floors 41 and 42" truly exist.
Even the New York Times ran a story in 2010, complete with a photo illustrating how loft-like the space, which starts on floor 37, is. There's even an Evening Magazine clip on YouTube, again with several interior shots, none of which provide any convincing visual illustration of these three mythical extra floors.
Now, I did find a historylink.org page that lays out a convincing case that, at one point, the true floor count was 36; and today it is 38. A couple excerpts:
The tower opened with 33 rentable above-ground floors and an observation deck and function room on the 35th story. The 34th story was a low-ceilinged windowless space not served by the elevators.
[That 34th floor with no elevator service would now be the floor we took stairs one level down form the observatory to the restrooms.]
...
One could reasonably conclude that the Smith Tower had 36 stories when it opened, counting the odd 34th floor that was not meant for human occupancy.
Decades later, a caretaker's apartment was built on the 36th floor, and its top could be considered floor number 37. A few years ago, that apartment was expanded into a two-story penthouse (albeit one without an exterior terrace), bringing the number of stories to 38.
I suppose that technically would not include the globe that in the King 5 video Petra Franklin claims to be the 42nd floor. Whether the globe should be considered a "story" I suppose is up for debate; if so, that would actually make it the 39th level.
As it stands, even today Emporis.com -- the online authority on skyscrapers -- lists it as having 36 floors; Wikipedia and HistoryLink both claim it's 38; the Smith Tower itself will evidently cling to its claim of 42 until the end of time.
