It used to be the tallest building in America. It used to be the tallest in the world. It used to be the Sears Tower.

Now Chicago’s Willis Tower is second, um, banana to New York’s not-yet-completed One World Trade Center, which was declared tallest in the nation Tuesday by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the official arbiter of disputes over the height of skyscrapers.

Council members from all over the world huddled here last week to decide whether the tower rising from the rubble of Manhattan’s Ground Zero would claim the top spot in the United States.

Yes, this required a panel of experts. At issue was whether the pointy thing atop the New York building should count as an architectural element or an antenna. One World Trade Center aspires to a symbolically significant height of 1,776 feet, including a 408-foot needle piercing the sky. Without the needle – we can state this confidently without involving a panel of experts – the building would measure 1,368 feet tall. The Willis Tower, minus antennas, is 1,451.

Don’t jump! Earth kept turning after Chicago lost the world’s tallest building title to the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1996.

Being named the “tallest in America” is good for little more than bragging rights for the building’s tenants and steady tourist traffic for its ground floor gift shop. (If you own a souvenir replica labeled “World’s Tallest,” be sure to snap up a now-dated “America’s Tallest” to go with it.)

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