Quote:
Originally Posted by car2004
I would never compare the Tower of Americas with the use and function of the buildings of San Diego and Austin. The tower of Americas, as said, is nothing more than a restaurant. Tallest thing between Houston and LA?---are we just courting the road to LA and Houston? The point was made not to take it away from being a "landmark" but to state that it has been hindering development of bigger projects with a much bigger (likely) economic potential to the city of San Antonio. Your point seems to be, if it is tall, it should stay. By that standard, I am guessing all the light structures along the highway should be landmarks, there tall and, most likely if more than one person could fit, would have a great view of the city. The point was to make something with total use of todays engineering. A city “icon” can only be fresh for so long. We cannot rely on just the past. We have to be innovative, new, and inventive. Adding Chart and 4D ride, whatever that is, is not going to cut it.
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I'd imagine you and LeCorbusier would have been pretty good friends, he wanted to tear down all of Paris and "rebuild" it with endless highrise apartment blocks.
I doubt anyone here would say the ToA is the classiest-looking thing in the world, but to say it is just a restaurant is akin to saying that the Alamo is just an old church. The tower symbolizes a time in the city's past when the world's eyes were trained on San Antonio, when for once in the history of this history-obsessed place there was no foot dragging or hand wringing about preservation or scale; they simply went out and built something modern (for the time) and iconic, and did so in record time. If you're unfamiliar with this history (hint: there's a reason its called "Hemis
fair tower") I'd suggest boning up on it before you go around trying to tear stuff down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_World%27s_Fair
Also, there's nothing wrong with the Milam building. Go to any city in the country and you'll find similar buildings mixed in amongst the modern glass towers.
Welcome to the forum.