Finally, just as the Titanic was required by the British Board of Trade to have the same number of lifeboats as a ship one-quarter its size, the building code generally required the same number of exit stairways—three—for a building 75 feet tall as for one 1,350 feet high. So a 110-story skyscraper had to provide no more capacity for escape than a six-story building. The building code’s limited stairway requirements not only embraced the implausibility of a total building evacuation for very tall buildings, but enshrined it.
