Chicago vs. New York

At dusk last August 14th, New York City’s skyline went dark. As New Yorkers were reminded during last summer’s blackout, skyscrapers constitute New York City’s most important icons; without their visual presence, the city practically disappeared.

Today, virtually every large city relies on skyscrapers to define its shape, but until the 1970s, the U.S., and the world, really had only two skyscraper capitals. The tall buildings first appeared in Chicago after the catastrophic fire of 1871. Architects including Louis Sullivan, William LeBaron Jenney ("father of the skyscraper"), Daniel Burnham, and John Root took advantage of the Chicago steel industry’s technological innovations to engineer the world’s first skyscrapers. Before the 1890s, Chicago’s skyscrapers were not only more numerous than those of New York, they were taller. By 1913, however, the New York skyline featured such giants as Ernest Flagg’s Singer Building (47 stories), Burnham’s Flatiron Building (22 stories), and Cass Gilbert’s colossal Woolworth building (60 stories). The New York skyscraper, tall and ornate, constituted a different breed of building than its shorter, stockier, Midwestern parent. 

Until late in the 20th century, new generations of architects designed ever-taller office and apartment buildings in both cities. This continual competition finally ended when New York’s World Trade Center was topped by Chicago’s Sears Tower in 1974 (dwarfed, in turn, by Malaysia’s Petronas Towers in 1996). The two cities exchanged capital and talent, a relationship that might be likened to that between this era’s “global cities.” While this relationship is often characterized as a race between Chicago and New York’s globetrotting architects, scholars argue that other forces-the cities’ zoning regulations, large corporations, citizens’ groups, and economies-shaped the cities’ skylines.

What does the future hold for New York and Chicago’s skylines? Is it still important to build tall buildings when office vacancies in American cities are as high as fourteen percent and skyscrapers compete with suburban office parks? In an era when more skyscrapers are being built in Asia than in North America, what is the future for New York and Chicago as cities in the sky?

The Next American City discussed these important questions with two prominent historians, Kenneth T. Jackson (author of Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States and President of the New York Historical Society) and Carol Willis (author of Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago and founder, director, and curator of The Skyscraper Museum).

Interview with Carol Willis

TNAC: It could be argued that New York and Chicago were already interacting as “global cities” in the late 19th century. How would you characterize the history of interaction and competition between the New York and Chicago architectural scenes over the years? Or is “competition” not the best way to term their interaction?

Carol Willis: In the 19th century the interaction was principally economic rather than architectural. As William Cronon so brilliantly comments in Nature’s Metropolis, New York and Chicago were the major depots for shipments coming into the inland United States and going out to the rest of the world, so railroads connected to the cities established the relationship between them and allowed them to grow in other ways. The skyscrapers and hotels where people stayed when they came to the metropolis were the first expressions of the phenomenon of architecture that came to characterize the two cities and became the skylines that most identified them.

So whether or not there’s such a thing as competition between the two cities is maybe in the minds of scholars or partisans of the two cities. Which place is the birthplace of the skyscraper has been one of the major questions. Most important is that at about the same time in the two cities, the tall office building became the most important expression of the concentration of population and business in city centers. Not just of business in the two cities, but also buyers looking to purchase wares to send out to other parts of America-coming into Marshall Fields in Chicago and making connections to broader markets in outlying smaller cities.

How important were individual architects to this interaction, as opposed to institutions, corporations, and citizens?

Well, architects always serve clients. In the smaller world of architecture aficionados or scholars we might concentrate on the idea of the influence of architects, but in fact architects like Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan and Mies van der Rohe needed special clients in order to build. I would say that in broader history it’s architects who stand out as decision makers. Burnham was happy to work in cities other than his hometown of Chicago. I don’t think Burnham thought of New York as a place to compete with as much as a place to compete for -for jobs. Likewise, Mies van der Rohe, who emigrated to Chicago, built one of New York’s most elegant and famous skyscrapers, the Seagram Building.

How important do you think skyscrapers are to Chicago’s economy these days? To New York’s?

Very important. They’re most important as part of the tax base of the city, as witnessed in New York in this year of fiscal crisis. Real estate, and especially commercial real estate, was assessed an additional 18.5 percent in order to meet the major portion of the city’s budget gap. That demonstrates the enormous value that real estate holds for the city. Beyond that, the identity of New York and Chicago and the image they present to the rest of the world resides in their skylines.

Has skyscraper competition shifted away from U.S. cities today? Or is competition not a relevant concept in the discussion of new skyscrapers?

Certainly skyscraper competition is best witnessed in Asia and Pacific Rim countries in the last decade. Cities like Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai use skyscrapers to declare their status as modern centers of business. Of course, Hong Kong is the territory of skyscraper development now in the same way that New York was the leader in the early 20th century. 

What is your favorite skyscraper (existing or demolished) in New York? In Chicago?

As I’ve said many times, the Empire State Building. It’s not only my favorite skyscraper; it’s my favorite building in the history of architecture. It is a skyscraper which is at the same time the most typical and most extraordinary of its era. The most inspiring thing about the building is the way it stands separate from the cluster of towers in Midtown and establishes its majestic silhouette.

I guess I have two favorites in Chicago-a little one and a big one. Maybe the U.S. Steel Building, which is a gem like the Lever House in New York. I admire the John Hancock Building as an example of engineering and architectural innovation in the 1960s.

Interview with Kenneth T. Jackson

Along with the suburb, the skyscraper has become a major distinguishing feature of the American landscape over the last hundred or so years. How do you distinguish New York and Chicago’s roles in the development of the American skyscraper?

Kenneth T. Jackson: First of all, I would say skyscrapers are no longer uniquely American. They’re certainly not European, but you see a lot of them in Asia. I’m very fond of Chicago, especially of the Loop. I’m drawn to it. Chicago has a very different feel than New York, I think because the streets are wider. The main difference is that New York has many tall buildings that people live in. Chicago has one-fifth as many tall buildings as New York, and in Chicago the tradition of living in tall buildings is not so present. On the Upper East Side and Upper West Side a lot of people live above the 20th floor.

Chicago is considered the birthplace of the skyscraper, but New York surpassed Chicago (in numbers of tall buildings) in a matter of decades. Aside from building codes, what do you believe to be the primary reasons for this?

I would say New York had surpassed Chicago by 1900, as soon as the Singer, Flatiron, and Woolworth Buildings had been built. The 1920s saw a big building boom in New York. But in Chicago skyscrapers tend to be more architecturally distinguished. New York has an ambiance of skyscrapers to it, but I don’t think the individual buildings are as distinguished-they could be in Indianapolis.

Two things were different. The lot sizes in New York were smaller and the zoning regulations less powerful-you had fewer limits on what you could build. So in New York you had towers where in Chicago you had shorter, more massive buildings.

When construction of skyscrapers first began, New York and Chicago architects and planners interacted at events such as the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Do you think it was this kind of interaction that fueled the transfer of building ideas between the two cities? Do you consider any individuals or phenomena particularly important?

The tall buildings in New York and Chicago in the last part of the 19th century were signature buildings; if you were culturally aware you had to know about these buildings. New Yorkers dominated the Columbian Exposition-although that caused some to say that the exposition was not up-to-date. There was movement around by figures like Burnham and Sullivan. The 20th Century Limited train went back and forth overnight, so that builders could move very quickly between the two cities. There were competitions, there were things like the Columbian Exposition, but there was also a lot of movement between the two cities.

These days, big skyscraper projects such as the Trump Towers and projects in Tribeca come under fire from “not in my backyard” quality of life activists. How do you think this activism compares to the public outcry against the Equitable Building in 1915?

I think it was a little easier to build them then. The Equitable Building helped lend support to the zoning envelope. Then, when you were in the zoning envelope, you could build as high as you wanted. I think it’s more difficult to build a tall building today. I think there’s certainly less of a rush to build the world’s tallest building. The first reason is that buildings beyond 75 stories don’t make economic sense; the second is that after 9/11 there’s a little bit of fear living in a tall building. Tall buildings are still being built, but I think there’s a bit more reluctance to build a really tall building. I think it’s important to note that before September 11, there had been no incidents with skyscrapers. I think it’s a bum rap to say they’re not safe. It’s not that the buildings are not safe; it’s more a case of airplanes not being safe.

You have argued that the American suburb no longer poses a genuine threat to the city; American urban centers are making a comeback. Do you think this necessarily means that skyscrapers will continue to be built in large cities, or are they becoming obsolete?

I think suburbanization remains a kind of threat. Before 9/11 the trend was back towards cities; now I think it’s kind of fuzzy. I certainly think we’ve overbuilt suburban office parks. In cities there are buildings being built, but not very tall buildings. We have a lot of empty office space in Houston and all sorts of other cities. I’m very concerned about the spreading out of office parks.

How much do you think Jersey City and other “satellite cities” threaten New York’s economy-driven skyscrapers? Do you think Chicago faces the same kinds of challenges?

Well, it’s certainly different. You don’t have a city across the water from Chicago. Evanston and the other cities near it have never posed a threat to Chicago. The real threat to Chicago comes from the skyscrapers around the O’Hare Airport, but it helps the Chicago metro region for the buildings to be there and not out in Kansas City.

It also helps New York for there to be skyscrapers in Jersey City. New York is beginning to be a little bit like Hong Kong or Vancouver, with ferries running from one side of the water to the other. I kind of like that. You’re getting more of a life on the waterfront than before. But it’s going to be a long time before Jersey City looks like Manhattan.

What is your favorite skyscraper (existing or demolished)?

I would say it’s the Empire State Building, because it serves as a beacon for where you are in the region. You can see it first, and it helps orient you, in the same way that the World Trade Center towers did.