North American Regional Skyscraper Concentration

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

And if we want to consider Canada as a "5th macro region", we find that it is moving towards the highly concentrated model with Toronto's staggering skyline growth over the past decade.

Canada:

Distribution of Canada's 20 tallest skyscrapers:

Toronto: 16
Calgary: 2
Edmonton: 1
Montreal: 1

Toronto accounts for roughly 1.5x more 500 footers than the rest of the nation combined.




source: CTBUH

Minor correction. Calgary: Brookfield Place, The Bow, Telus Sky, and Suncor Energy are all in the top 20. Of Canada's 20 tallest buildings the break down is as follows:

Toronto: 14
Calgary: 4
Edmonton: 1
Montreal: 1

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

here's a list of US cities ordered by the year they first got a 700 footer:

NYC - 1909
cleveland - 1930
boston - 1964
chicago - 1969
SF - 1969
pittsburgh - 1970
houston - 1971
LA - 1973
minneapolis - 1973
dallas - 1974
atlanta - 1976
detroit - 1978
miami - 1984
denver - 1984
seattle - 1985
philly - 1987
indianapolis - 1990
charlotte - 1992
mobile - 2007
oklahoma city - 2012
atlantic city - 2012


so perhaps detroit was a touch late to the 700' club, but it wasn't that far out of line with most of its peers.

only NYC and cleveland truly jumped out way ahead of everyone else on that particular score.

San Antonio* - 1968
Austin - 2020

*Observation tower, not a high rise.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Minor correction. Calgary: Brookfield Place, The Bow, Telus Sky, and Suncor Energy are all in the top 20. Of Canada's 20 tallest buildings the break down is as follows:

Toronto: 14
Calgary: 4
Edmonton: 1
Montreal: 1

Well, the CTBUH says my numbers are correct.

Remember, I was including U/C towers as well.

Either way, not a huge difference.

[spoonman]

FWIW, San Diego has a 500ft height limit due to the proximity of SAN. SD has numerous 30-40 story twin tower complexes and could easily have XX+ towers over 500ft if the limit was not in place.

[jmecklenborg]

Cincinnati's skyscrapers are clustered because the downtown is situated on an "upper alluvial plain". It is a hump of sedimentary rock that measures about 8 blocks wide and about 18 blocks high. This area is just high enough to have never flooded, maybe 20 feet above the surrounding flood plain. It's what gives the Cincinnati skyline a "raised" look.

[McBane]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Cleveland's Key Tower is still a pretty big deal in the US, even 3 decades after its completion.

With an official height of 947', it's currently the 9th tallest skyscraper in the country outside of NYC and Chicago. And even its roof height of 888' is still high enough for it to rank 12th by that measure.

Anyway you cut, it is at least 100' taller than any other Midwest skyscraper outside of Chicago.



Source: http://www.clevelandskyscrapers.com/key-tower/

Certainly a tall building by any measure, although the real gem in Cleveland is Terminal Tower.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by McBane

Certainly a tall building by any measure, although the real gem in Cleveland is Terminal Tower.

yeah, you can say that cleveland had a penchant for throwing up improbably tall buildings.

first there was terminal tower. built in 1930 at 708' tall, it was the tallest skyscraper in the US outside of NYC all the way until 1964 when boston's prudential tower was completed.

then key tower was built in 1991 with a total height of 947', much taller than one would've expected in a mid-size midwest city at that time.

together, they give cleveland a lot more vertical oomph than your typical midwest skyline.



source: https://www.tcpi.com/cleveland/cleve...hore-at-night/

[The North One]

Key Tower has really aged poorly. Terminal tower looks like a soviet government building and not in a good way.

[PoshSteve]

Expect the downtown Cleveland skyline to fill in some more in the next few years. Since the above pic was taken, we've had 4 highrise additions topped out - EY office tower (under construction on the left, 2013 21 stories), Hilton Convention Center (2016, 32 stories), Beacon apartment tower (2019, 29 stories), and Lumen apartment tower (2020, 34 stories). Sherwin Williams will also be starting their new HQ tower soon, and their new downtown "urban campus" may include up to 4 additional highrises (details are still slim but possibly starting this year), and the 23 story City Club apartments will be under construction this year. Nucleus also may or may not start soon with two 24 story office and residential towers. 4-5 rumored highrises possibly to be announced soon too.

While we may not be the highest skyline (aforementioned poor soil conditions), we are shaping up to be a dense one. Once Sherwin Williams begins, surface parking lots will be in very short supply downtown.

[KevinFromTexas]

Cool list, Steely Dan. This is the kind of skyscraper geekdom that got me hooked on the subject. Not boosterism, just pure nerdy stats to pore over.

Originally Posted by wwmiv

San Antonio* - 1968
Austin - 2020

*Observation tower, not a high rise.

The Tower of the Americas in San Antonio, though, besides being an observation tower, is also only 622 feet to the roof. I've always seen 750 feet listed for it on all the tourist brochures and postcards, but that height is including the antenna. The FCC now lists the antenna height as 728 feet, the last time I checked, at least. Also, the 622 foot roof height came from a set of detailed info in an information book I bought a few years ago in the tower that broke down all the heights on the tower and other dimensions, including detailed info and some really great photos of its construction.

Also, Austin doesn't quite yet have a 700 footer, but they're working on it. I can't believe there's actually a hole being dug for an 848 foot building in Austin at the moment. Officially, we have 4 buildings proposed that are over 700 feet that we know of that are actually stated to be that height, but there are also at least 2 to 3 more that will surely top that height, but that we don't yet have official heights for.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by The North One

Key Tower has really aged poorly. Terminal tower looks like a soviet government building and not in a good way.

I think the Key Tower looks good. It isn’t a stunner, but it’s far from vomiting inducing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

Cool list, Steely Dan. This is the kind of skyscraper geekdom that got me hooked on the subject. Not boosterism, just pure nerdy stats to pore over.

hopefully you'll enjoy these graphs as well. this is about as nerdy as skyscraper nerdery gets.

each dot represents a completed skyscraper over 150m, and each open circle represents one currently U/C.

unfortunately, i had to split the south into two graphs because there are just too many cities down there with at least one skyscraper


new york and toronto are not fucking around these days.

















all data from the CTBUH.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

hopefully you'll enjoy these graphs as well.

each dot represents a completed skyscraper over 150m, and each open circle represents one currently U/C.

unfortunately, i had to split the south into two graphs because there are just too many cities with at least one skyscraper down there.


new york and toronto are not fucking around these days.





all data from the CTBUH.

Is the Hudson Tower not on there as u/c for Detroit because the height is still TBD?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Is the Hudson Tower not on there as u/c for Detroit because the height is still TBD?

correct.

no definitive final plan + no height figure = no CTBUH entry.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

correct.

no definitive final plan + no height figure = no CTBUH entry.

Got it.

Originally Posted by pj3000

Good research. Yeah, perhaps the 700-footer example isn't a very good one. But considering that Detroit was the 4th or 5th largest city in the country, for around 7 decades, I'd think it would have a more height in its skyline, based on that fact alone. I mean, until Ren Center was built in the late 70s, Detroit only had one building over 500 feet tall. But then again, Detroit built a lot of incredible 400-footers in the 1920s. It just didn't build very tall after than until Ren Center around 60 years later.

But then again, Cleveland had the Terminal Tower as a complete outlier... with the rest of its contemporary buildings only being in the 200-foot tier for the most part (only one other bldg is over 300 ft from the period).

* Philly can probably removed from this list due to artificial influence (i.e., the "gentlemen's agreement height restriction in effect until One Liberty was finished in 1987); the city would have undoubtedly built much taller than City Hall back in the 1920s/30s had it not bee adhered to

Wanted to loop back to this discussion. The charts that Steely put up illustrate the point I was making before. Pre-1980 Detroit was a tall skyline for that era. By my rough count, only NYC and Chicago were well ahead by 1980. It's just most of the +150m construction occurred after 1980, which coincided with Detroit's fall out of the top 5.

[cabasse]

Originally Posted by The North One

Key Tower has really aged poorly. Terminal tower looks like a soviet government building and not in a good way.

groan.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by The North One

Key Tower has really aged poorly. Terminal tower looks like a soviet government building and not in a good way.

no, but yr clueless schtick has aged poorly and not in a good way.

the fact is key tower looks so good later on they even built another one in charlotte. and speaking of later on, the moscow seven sisters were all built later than the terminal tower, so if anything, they resemble the tt, not the other way around. actually they all resemble the ny municipal building, but whatever.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Kinda, but not really. For Detroit's historical size and prominence, one would expect the city to have developed a heftier (taller and more densely-clustered skyline). It was a top 10 largest US city from 1910-2000, and a top 5 largest from 1920-1970/80. Yet, it didn't even get a 700-footer until the late 1970s. While it has beautiful examples of Art Deco era skyscrapers from the 1920s, most of them are under 500 ft. and the city really didn't build very tall at all after that (the 60s-70s era buildings are generally in the 300ft range... and Detroit basically did nothing in the 1980s skyscraper era during which so many cities remarkably changed their skylines).

Like all Great Lakes cities, it formed a strong core, but still spread out rapidly because of available flat land... and Detroit is probably the poster child for this, with its auto industry prominence and its resultant suburban nodes featuring tall buildings. Just based on historical population figures and national prominence, cities like Detroit and Cleveland should feature taller and more dense skylines... but we understand that numbers don't tell the whole story.

My theory is that the lack of standard city block sizes in cities like Detroit and Cleveland meant that it was more economical for developers to build wide rather than tall. Chicago is surrounded by flat land as well, yet a majority of the city's high-rises are rather skinny or have small/elongated footprints. You would think this is because Chicago's grid is a limiting factor on lot sizes and therefore available space to build per lot, right?


For example, the First National Building is only 26 floors and has a roof height just under 350 FT. It zig-zags on a long triangular lot.


First National Building, Detroit, Michigan by Ken Lund, on Flickr

Chicago's NBC Tower is just about the same square footage but since it's taller than it is wide, its roof height is just under 500 FT (plus the spire sending it to 627).


NBC Tower
Antoine Taveneaux / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Detroit could have had a few taller buildings if the city block sizes were similar to that of Chicago, I think.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Wanted to loop back to this discussion. The charts that Steely put up illustrate the point I was making before. Pre-1980 Detroit was a tall skyline for that era. By my rough count, only NYC and Chicago were well ahead by 1980. It's just most of the +150m construction occurred after 1980, which coincided with Detroit's fall out of the top 5.

It's also important to remember that the charts I made only start at 150m.

Detroit only had two such towers in the prewar era, but if we drop the height threshold a bit, say down to 400', Detroit actually had 7 such prewar towers. In fact,. In 1950, Detroit was the #3 city in the world for 400+ foot towers.

400+ footers in 1950:

NYC - 87
Chicago - 23
Detroit - 7
Pittsburgh - 4
Philadelphia.- 3
Kansas City - 3


Where Detroit really stumbled in the skyscraper game was the postwar period where very little was built, until the Renaissance Center hail mary in the late 70s.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

It's also important to remember that the charts I made only start at 150m.

Detroit only had two such towers in the prewar era, but if we drop the height threshold a bit, say down to 400', Detroit actually had 7 such prewar towers. In fact,. In 1950, Detroit was the #3 city in the world for 400+ foot towers.

400+ footers in 1950:

NYC - 87
Chicago - 23
Detroit - 7
Pittsburgh - 4
Philadelphia.- 3
Kansas City - 3


Where Detroit really stumbled in the skyscraper game was the postwar period where very little was built, until the Renaissance Center hail mary in the late 70s.

Yeah, this gets more at what I was talking about with Detroit having a less impressive skyline than it does for a city of its historical size throughout the 1900s for the most part. They just didn’t build all that tall postwar, particularly not in the 80s skyscraper boom era when so many cities dramatically boosted their skylines.

I guess for all that Detroit did in the 1920s/30s, it’s reasonable to expect that we would have seen more height and volume in the decades thereafter than we did. It’s like Detroit built some of the best prewar selection and then kinda quit. And Cleveland built the Terminal Tower and not too much else in terms of height and volume until the 80s/90s. In a vacuum, considering that the two cities were among the nation’s top largest for a good chunk of skyline-shaping decades, I find their skylines less impressive than they should be.

The early postwar period is an interesting comparison in the case of Cleveland... look at its population and its skyline in the 1950s, and then look at the same for Cincinnati and Pittsburgh...