Forum: Author Hangout

In the US, the ground floor is referred to as the first floor,

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that in the US.

Ground floor and 1st floor are sometimes both used in a single building. And sometimes, the street level will be listed as ground floor and the next floor up is the 2nd floor (ground floor is also the 1st floor).

Where ground and 1st floors both being used happens most often is with buildings built on a hill side so that you have street level pedestrian entrances on two consecutive floors. In which case, the lower street entrance is the ground floor and the upper street entrance is the first floor. Not every building with two entrance levels will do this.

The other place I've seen this is in downtown Chicago, where they raised the primary street level up one floor, but left the original street level accessible to traffic. So many streets in downtown Chicago have an upper and lower level for the street itself.

I can't recall ever seeing a building in the US using both ground and 1st floor that had only one level for pedestrian entrance.

Note: I don't know the history of why or when the street level was raised in Chicago, AFIK, it was done before I was born (and I'm in my 50s).

Waaaay before your time. The lower levels were created in the mid to late 1800's to keep the streets dry. The area was very marshy and tended to get wet. So a new roadway was created up about 15 feet. That meant that many buildings now had an entrance on their third level. That meant that freight could now enter from the lower level and not interfere with customers. In some cases, there are multiple levels. There is Wacker St, Lower Wacker St, and Lower-Lower Wacker St. When I first started driving interstate trucks, in the 1970's, I was assigned a 13' trailer and made several trips into the underside of Chicago. A year later I got a 13'6" trailer and couldn't go there any more. Some truckers referred to the lower levels as the catacombs.

It is kind of like Underground Atlanta that was created to continue to safely allow trains into the area rather than mixing them with pedestrians.

Yep, that's also how the pedestrians referred to it, though the exhaust smoke made it difficult spending much time there, despite the free-flowing air along the river running alongside it.

It's quite common in Chicago, where the ground floor is beside the underground highway, which is accessible by car (Ground Floor), while the above ground floor is also equally accessible by car (passenger, taxi, delivery van, etc.).

You don't have that in most American cities, despite also having below ground subway access (I used to access the NYC World Trade Center via the subway, which was buried under both towers when they collapsed, which also had a shopping plaza below the ground floor and a separate pedestrian entrance on the second (I'd access it from the Bank I walked at across the street) so there were literally four separate pedestrian accesses to the building (once you exited your vehicle).

I'd moved before then, yet I lost several very good friends and personal connections on that day, most of whose remains were never found, as they were identified by either body parts or random skin cells in the massive debris field once the dust all settled.

It's quite common in Chicago, where the ground floor is beside the underground highway, which is accessible by car (Ground Floor), while the above ground floor is also equally accessible by car (passenger, taxi, delivery van, etc.).

I believe I explicitly mentioned that. I used to work in the loop.

I don't remember ever seeing that.

I've seen it with elevators that have front and back doors. On the first floor, one side opens to the lobby and the others don't. Which doors open on the first floor depends on which button you push (1 or L).

Most often this is in hospitals where the back door opens to a non-public area on the first floor and 1 requires a key.

Yep, I've used those too, though the Belgian, Antwerp stations is an efficient nuthouse it's so busy. It's amazing to observe in passing.

While I recall "B" (Basement), "G" or "0" (ground floor) and then "L" for the Lobby on the second floor. Then there were the high-speed express elevators, which were only accessible from the 2nd floor due to the additional safety requirements (the normal elevators failed fairly often while the high-speed relied on the backup generators stored on the upper floors of the building, just below the building's water tanks (which worked by gravity).

I remember elevators in the U.S. having "L" (lobby) for the ground floor and "1" (first) for the next one up.

I've seen "L", but only on an elevator bank that opens into the lobby. And if there was a 1 and an L it was because the elevator had two doors and only one opened to the lobby on the first floor.

Often for hospitals, the lowest floor is where the ambulances and/or other emergency vehicles arrive, including servicemen accessing those areas. Which, at least in Chicago, was often on the opposite side of the building from the lowest level access.

Though several hospitals in Houston and San Antonio, TX had the same lower-level access for service vehicles, where there were serious flooding issues. Then again, Manhattan NYC frequently had serious flooding along the two rivers surrounding the city, so they'd flood alternately.

I was always a frustrated non-engineer and was thus fascinated by such details.

Often for hospitals, the lowest floor is where the ambulances and/or other emergency vehicles arrive, including servicemen accessing those areas.

There are two main hospitals I've used where I currently live. One is like that. It's on a hill. The other is on flat land and the ambulance entrance is on the same level as the main lobby.

A very large hospital or a very steep hill.

Not a sharp slope; they built it up against a cliff.

Arguably vertical is an extremely sharp slope. It can't get steeper than that.

Eh, there are always inverse slopes, where the slopes but into the mountain, making the fall that much more precarious. (Back in the day, I climbed a few of those, though I didn't do it enough to become very accomplished at it. Still, it's quite a rush.)

And again, that was the basis of one of my most favored stories (part of, not the entire premise however).

Once in Palermo I stayed in a motel, the lobby was downstairs from the street we arrived on. We way to the room was, downstairs from the lobby, a long corridor, downstairs again, so -3rd floor from that street. It was dead night, so yes, there where lights out the window, but I didn't pay attention until morning when I was surprised with a great view over the Palermo bay. The room had a balcony that was on the third floor above a roof that was a story or two above another roof...

We're moving into a complex where the parking garage, 1 level below the main floor, is referred to as "-1" (minus 1) on the elevator keys. I've never seen that anywhere in my extensive travels.

I've seen the minus designation fairly often around the country.