In what year was each major American city’s tallest building built? Does this tell you anything about a place’s attitudes towards growth?

I’m not sure how meaningful a measure it is, but I thought of this in the observation deck of the Columbia Center tower in Seattle, looking out over the city. That building, the city’s tallest, was finished in 1985. That number kind of surprised me. Wow, it’s been 39 years since Seattle built a “new” tallest building, I thought.

Obviously most of these towers are office space, and they may not correlate with housing production or with anything else, really. But I thought this was a fun bit of trivia, at least, so I picked 10 major American cities and looked at what year their tallest building was built (completed).

Boston: 1976, John Hancock Tower

New York City: 2014, One World Trade Center

Philadelphia: 2018, Comcast Technology Center

Charlotte: 1992, Bank of America Corporate Center

Austin: 2024, Sixth and Guadalupe

St Louis: One Metropolitan Square, 1989

Detroit: Renaissance Center, 1981

San Francisco: 2018, Salesforce Tower

Seattle: 1985, Columbia Center

Washington, D.C. is a special case because of the city’s strict height limit: its tallest structure is the Washington Monument, and its tallest actual building is the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, followed in second place by the Old Post Office. You’ll have to go to Arlington and Fairfax Counties for actual high-rises.

Again, I’m not sure how tight of a correlation there is here with a pro-building attitude in general. But I will note that Austin is a big YIMBY success story and is building a lot of everything, and it also updated its tallest structure this year. And Boston is one of the major housing-crunched American cities, and it hasn’t updated its tallest since the Bicentennial—which, if you’re counting, is nearly 50 years ago. St. Louis and Detroit haven’t updated since cities came back into favor in America.

Housing advocates aren’t necessarily pro-skyscraper, especially because, as noted, these buildings are typically either office space or extremely expensive and excusive condominiums. But I do think we’ve lost something of a general attitude when cities and builders no longer complete to set a new record. We understood that building things was tied to optimism and a belief in the future. And I wonder if the decline of those feelings is part of NIMBYism and our failure to build anything quickly and decisively these days.

What about these cities’ second-tallest buildings’ build years? (You can look that one up if it interests you.)

Tell me if you think anything in terms of housing policy can be determined from this.

Related Reading:

You Can Take It With You

The Path of Most Desire

A City Writ Small

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