How many flights of stairs is the Empire State Building?
About 86 flights — one per floor — and 1,576 stairs to the 86th-floor observatory, which is the route the official Empire State Building Run-Up climbs. Your iPhone will say closer to 103, because Apple Health scores a flight as roughly ten feet of climb rather than one storey. Carry on to the 102nd-floor deck and the count is about 1,860 steps.
The gap between 1,576 and 1,860 steps is not a disagreement — it is two different destinations. Most sources quote the 86th floor because that is where the observatory and the race finish are; the 102nd-floor deck adds another sixteen storeys on top.
The 86-versus-103 gap is the more interesting one, because it is the difference between how a building is described and how a phone measures you. Ask an architect and a flight is a run of stairs between two landings, so the answer is nearer 172. Ask the Run-Up, and it is 86 — one per floor. Ask Apple Health, and it counts ten feet of climb as a flight, which lands on 103. All three are honest; they are counting different things.
Which is why the number your phone shows you at the end of a week is hard to place on its own. It is measured in a unit nobody built a landmark in.
Comparisons at roughly that scale
Each one links to where the number came from.
- 0.07 miAmerican football fieldsSource