The Millennium Tower Has No 44th Floor Because of an Asian Superstition

Photo by Matthew Dailey on Flickr/Creative Commons

In some hotels, the number 13 is often skipped over when denoting rooms to put superstitious patrons at ease. Other buildings, in a more drastic move, omit the 13th floor altogether. But as our foreign-backed luxury housing boom has revealed, the bad juju surrounding 13 is very much a Western idea; it’s “4” we should be worried about.

Four? Bad luck? In Boston? Storied home of Bobby Orr, Joe Cronin, and Adam Vinatieri?

Both the nearly completed Millennium Tower and the 61-story One Dalton, soon-to-be third-tallest building in Boston’s crowding skyline, have neither a 13th floor, nor a 44th floor. One Dalton will go one step further, omitting its fourth floor as well, though the Four Seasons hotel occupying the luxury high-rise will keep its name intact.

“The goal is to be aware of and respectful of cultural preferences beyond our own,’’  Justine Griffin, spokesperson for One Dalton developer, Carpenter & Co. of Cambridge, told the Globe. A spokesperson for Millennium Partners similarly said the 44th floor was omitted “out of respect to our Asian owners.”

Four is considered bad luck in China and much of Southeast Asia; in several dialects, its pronunciation is awfully close to the word for “death.” Much of One Dalton, a $750 million undertaking, is funded by a loan from a London hedge fund, as well as several other individuals. An estimated 30 percent of the 185 condos that will loom over the Christian Science Plaza in the Back Bay will be purchased by foreign buyers.