Is the soon-to-be-finished One World Trade Center the tallest building in the United States?  Thomas Leslie, author of Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934, says maybe not.

Leslie wrote an op-ed for the New York Times making the case for Chicago’s Willis Tower to hold the claim of the tallest building in the U.S.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat will weigh in on the “tallest” debate once One World Trade is officially completed.

As Leslie writes, “deciding just how tall a building is turns out to be more complicated than it might seem.”

Photo credit: Jay Galvin, Flickr Creative Commons