Has any city in N. America outside of New York had 4 SUPERTALLS u/c at the same time?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Toasty Joe

would be 7 if 181 W Madison were 200'+ taller.

yeah, 681 W Madison is a very nice Pelli tower, but at only 680' tall and buried deep in the loop forest, it has almost zero skyline presence from just about any angle, which is too bad.

even more true for Phillip Johnson's 190 S Lasalle from a few years earlier.


It's kind of a bummer that two of the tallest late-'80s po-mo towers in Chicago were the KPF duds (900 N Michigan & 311 S Wacker). i would have GLADLY traded shorter versions of those two for taller versions of the Pelli & Phillip Johnson towers referenced above. or much taller versions of Adrian Smith's NBC tower and Ralph Johnson's 100 N Riverside. Or any number of Jahn's towers buried deep in the loop (at least 1000M will posthumously give Jahn a tower of lasting skyline presence in his adopted homeyown).

[chris08876]

Hopefully Austin surprises folks and takes the #1 slot on the continent (u/c at the same time).

If you asked me 10 years ago and said Austin would be where its at... wouldn't have predicted it. Amazing transformation and promising future. Would of though Dallas honestly but Austin is on a roll!

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by chris08876

Hopefully Austin surprises folks and takes the #1 slot on the continent (u/c at the same time).

If you asked me 10 years ago and said Austin would be where its at... wouldn't have predicted it. Amazing transformation and promising future. Would of though Dallas honestly but Austin is on a roll!

I don't see that happening, but we'll see. My bet is downtown Austin is peaking and will start seriously sprawling with more towers outside downtown like DFW and Houston. Perhaps DFW might stop sprawling somewhat and re-discover its downtown like LA has done. I could see Miami taking the top spot only because its pull of Latin American wealthy folks who seem like tall residential towers, if you look at cities like Panama City and Cartegena Columbia.

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Toronto is if anything less audacious than it once was. It had a 600m proposal in the 70s, I think it would have been around College Park.

John Maryon Tower. It would have been 686 m., or 2251 ft. to the top of its antenna.

[MAC123]

Bro that's insane. If built right now it would still be the second tallest in the world. Of course I couldn't see it happening in Toronto of the 60s but who knows.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by MAC123

Bro that's insane. If built right now it would still be the second tallest in the world. Of course I couldn't see it happening in Toronto of the 60s but who knows.

Toronto built the 553m CN Tower in 1973 which reign supreme for 40 years

[MAC123]

Originally Posted by Nite

Toronto built the 553m CN Tower in 1973 which reign supreme for 40 years

It's also a tower. Toronto still has yet to build a single building above 300 M, much less double that height. (Though it is in the process of building a couple supertalls as we speak)

[Nite]

Originally Posted by MAC123

It's also a tower. Toronto still has yet to build a single building above 300 M, much less double that height. (Though it is in the process of building a couple supertalls as we speak)

You completely missed my point. Toronto of the 60's and 70's seems more daring than it is Today, to even propose a 600m+ tower in the 60's seems outlandish. If there is a Toronto that would ever build a 600m+ tower It would be the version of the city in the 60 and 70's compared to now.

[MAC123]

Originally Posted by Nite

You completely missed my point. Toronto of the 60's and 70's seems more daring than it is Today, to even propose a 600m+ tower in the 60's seems outlandish. If there is a Toronto that would ever build a 600m+ tower It would be the version of the city in the 60 and 70's compared to now.

Oh I see. Yeah the CN Tower was super ambitious. It's interesting what Toronto would have looked like had some of the bigger proposals from then had gone through.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Gresto

John Maryon Tower. It would have been 686 m., or 2251 ft. to the top of its antenna.

I've seen this before. It looks like the bastard child of the space needle and the former 1 World Trade Center. Extremely ugly.

Or a much taller version of the Harbour Centre in Vancouver. Also extremely ugly.

[WhipperSnapper]

John Maryon Tower was never a proposal. It's a drawing the architect, John Maryon, created for fun and publicity. There's probably some mile high tower being drawn in a Toronto office at any given time.

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by Nite

You completely missed my point. Toronto of the 60's and 70's seems more daring than it is Today, to even propose a 600m+ tower in the 60's seems outlandish. If there is a Toronto that would ever build a 600m+ tower It would be the version of the city in the 60 and 70's compared to now.

I think what actually got built matters more than ideas that went nowhere. Toronto built 1000s of high rises from the mid 1960s to the late 70s. 30 storeys (regardless of number of metres tall) was exceedingly rare. Today, 30 storeys is so common that the height aficionados wonder why the developer didn't go taller.

[Innsertnamehere]

1960's Toronto was ambitious.. but not 300+m ambitious for anything real. The most ambitious project of the era was CN Rail's planned redevelopment of it's downtown rail yards, which at it's centrepiece was to be a large new communications tower, the tallest in the world. The project would have demolished Union Station and developed large residential, office, hotel, and commercial spaces, including a convention centre.

Of the project, only the Convention Centre and CN tower got built. The rest got cancelled.

An early vision of the project: Notice that the communications tower has a 3-prong design which is significantly different than what ended up getting built.





Later versions of the proposal retained the central portion of Union Station:



a better view of the original design for the CN tower:



The final version before cancellation, showing the CN tower looking closer to how it was built:




The only "real" cancelled supertall in Toronto was from the 1990's when Loblaws proposed a supertall at Yonge and the 401 in suburban North York for their HQ (called "Wittington Place"). The proposal at the time also included a 20,000 seat arena to be the home of the Toronto Raptors, prior to the construction of the Scotiabank Arena downtown. At the time the Raptors and Leafs were under seperate ownership and were planning seperate arenas - The Leafs were about to start construction on their rink directly over Union Station before last minute buying the Raptors and taking over the Scotiabank Arena project, which had evolved after the cancellation of the Wittington Place project.

It would have featured a 57 storey office building with large spire, designed by Arthur Erickson..



The largest buildings not to be in the downtown core of Toronto were an early version of the Eaton Centre, which would have demolished old City Hall (notice a theme here?):



And the cancelled Bay Adelaide Centre of the 1980's, which was actually partially built with it's concrete core sticking several floors out of the ground for 2 decades after cancellation (On the left of the image):



None were supertalls though.

[Maldive]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

It (edit: First Canadian Place) was also something like the 6th tallest building in the world at that time.

FCP was also the tallest bank building in the world, and the tallest building in the world outside of nyc and chi-town.

When 72 storeys and 45,000 panels of white Carrara marble ($$$) stained and crumbled, it was beautifully re-clad in white fritted glass with bronze/black corners.

Glass frit:

UT

Must have been one of the largest re-clads in history (I think there's been a similarly scaled re-clad in Chicago):


Link

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

It (edit: First Canadian Place) was also something like the 6th tallest building in the world at that time.

technically, FCP was the 8th tallest skyscraper in the world upon its completion in 1975 by CTBUH rules (or 7th if you don't wanna include the chrysler building's spire).

and it remained in the global top 10 for nearly 15 years.


tallest skyscrapers in the world in 1975 (by CTBUH rules):

1. sears - 1,451'
2. 1 WTC - 1,368'
3. 2 WTC - 1,362'
4. ESB - 1,250'
5. Aon - 1,136'
6. JHC - 1,128'
7. chrysler - 1,046'
8. FCP - 978'

Originally Posted by Maldive

(I think there's been a similarly scaled re-clad in Chicago):

yes, chicago's Aon Center (1973) was also designed by E.D. Stone (architect of FCP) and was originally clad with the same super-thin white carrara marble veneer panels that eventually weathered and warped after a couple decades in chicago's harsh winter climate, and some panels even fell off the building and crashed to the ground.

like FCP, the decision was eventually made in the early '90s to do an extremely expensive re-clad of the entire 1,136' tall building. in Aon's case, they opted to go with a much more durable white granite as a replacement stone to stay more true to the architect's original vision. the new granite isn't as brilliantly white as the original marble (no sheen), but it appears to be holding up much better.



original marble:


source: https://www.ebay.com/itm/294345415728



granite re-clad:


source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aon_Center_(Chicago)

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yes, chicago's Aon Center (1973) was also designed by E.D. Stone (architect of FCP) and was originally clad with the same super-thin white carrara marble veneer panels that eventually weathered and warped after a couple decades in chicago's harsh winter climate, and some panels even fell off the building and crashed to the ground.

like FCP, the decision was eventually made in the early '90s to do an extremely expensive re-clad of the entire 1,136' tall building. in Aon's case, they opted to go with a much more durable white granite as a replacement stone to stay more true to the architect's original vision. the new granite isn't as brilliantly white as the original marble (no sheen), but it appears to be holding up much better.

This problem would surface at First Canadian Place as well. During an intense storm on the evening of 15 May 2007, a 140 kg (310 lb) white marble panel fell from the 60th storey of the tower's southern face onto the 3rd floor mezzanine roof below, causing authorities to close surrounding streets as a precaution

[Klippenstein]

Wow! Thanks for the history lesson Innsertnamehere and Maldive. Super interesting stuff. Can't believe I didn't see the similarity between First Canadian Place and the Aon Center before. And super glad Toronto didn't tear down the buildings you mentioned. Really seems to have a nice balance of old and new. On a similar note, Toronto has developed great ways of integrating old buildings into new developments that would be great to adopt in Chicago. It seems we either renovate and stick with the old building stick or completely knock it down. Almost no in between. I really wish we'd take that page from your book. Do you have laws forcing preservation or do developers just see the inherent value in it (even if partial) in Toronto?

[Innsertnamehere]

Toronto has extensive heritage preservation laws, yes. A good chunk of the city is heritage designated which gives the city the right to deny a demolition permit on the structure.

Basically most developments have to present some way of retaining the "heritage elements" of the existing building, typically the exterior facades, though some times it extends to interior features as well.

generally it works well, but some times ends up with some pretty ridiculous solutions, such as this preserved mid-century office building facade proposed at Yonge and Eglinton, which proposed to retain only two rows of windows of the original structure:



A more typical retention is something like this - keep the existing 2-3 storey brick facade with a modern condo plopped on top:



sometimes it gets quite extensive though - like 488 University which is retaining huge facades and building a new tower atop. This case would be extremely expensive to perform:



how construction is progressing so far on that one:


https://urbantoronto.ca/database/projects/united-bldg

The EY Tower demolished an art-deco office building brick by brick and rebuilt it at it's previous height but a few floors shorter to match the modern office building's floor-to-floor heights;


https://urbantoronto.ca/database/pro...entre-ey-tower

[The North One]

Aon must have looked really gorgeous with that marble. It doesn't get better than that for materials. Would be insanely impressive when it was still up, did anybody here see it in person? I'm guessing it was Vermont marble since that's usually the case in the US.

It's a shame mid-century architects ran with the super thin marble panels idea. Had the marble cladding just been a normal thickness it would have been totally fine. Detroit has a lot of prominent marble buildings that are nearing 100 years old, including the largest marble clad commercial building in the world.

Granite is still a really high quality material though, so it's not all bad.

[Steely Dan]

facadectomies have been done in chicago as well, but they aren't usually well-received by the local preservation community, who see them as "half-assed preservation".