Architecture Facts

The Taj Mahal took 20 years and 20 thousand men to finish!

The World Trade Center towers used to have two zip codes, 10047-10048, one for each building.

Because heat expands the metal, the Eiffel Tower always leans away from the sun.

The word 'attic' comes from Attica, the region around Athens, Greece, where a distinctive architectural style featured decorative columns on upper facades.

Jericho is the oldest walled city in the world at 9,000 yrs old!

One percent of Greenland's population lives in a single apartment building!

Sheikh Hamad, billionaire and royal family member in the United Arab Emirates, had a huge carving of his name that's even visible from space etched into a private island.

In 2007, a woman named Erika La Tour Eiffel married the Eiffel Tower.

Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows!

There is a basketball court on the top floor of the U.S. Supreme Court Building. It’s known as the “highest court in the land.”

The Gate Tower Building skyscraper in Japan has a highway passing through its fifth, sixth and seventh floors.

Instead of McDonald's tearing down a ~230-year-old Georgian mansion, citizens of a small NY town forced them to renovate it instead, resulting in a uniquely historic franchise location.

A 43-year-old French postman tripped over a stone on his rural mail round in 1879 and decided to build a palace. Ferdinand Cheval collected stones on his 18-mile route for 33 years - first in his pockets, then a basket, then a wheelbarrow. Neighbors called him insane. He carved into the wall: 10,000 days, 93,000 hours of struggle. 170,000 people a year now pay to see it.

Tyler Perry bought a former US Army base in Atlanta for $30 million and turned it into Tyler Perry Studios - bigger than Disney, Warner Bros., and Paramount combined. He built an 80%-scale White House replica for his BET series "The Oval." In 2023, the Secret Service used it for training because they lacked their own facility.