For me, skyscrapers are living, functional works of art. Those of the 1920s and 1930s strike me most. They are fusions of the day's latest materials and technology with Classical, Gothic, Romanesque, and Art Deco detailing (if you are confused by any terms, go to the end of this page for more detailed definitions). In this sense, they are monuments to both past and present—in contrast to the Modernist structures in vogue since the 1950s. Although I appreciate Modernism's concern for function and simplicity (I am impressed by Mies van der Rohe's Toronto-Dominion Centre and Cesar Pelli's TD Tower in Vancouver), I favour the earlier skyscrapers for their ornate detailing and their individual "personalities". I also appreciate Post-modernism's attempt to rekindle the artistic quality of architecture, a quality that seems to have been muted by the matter-of-fact International Style. For me, although function and simplicity promote efficient working and living, imagination and whimsy promote human spirit. (For an overview of the history of skyscrapers in America, see William Ellis's and Nathan Benn's article "Skyscrapers" in the February 1989 edition of National Geographic.) The following are some of my favourite buildings (including some Modernist ones!) Each says something important about my personality and my tastes...

Early 20th Century

At the beginning of the century, the skyscraper was often inspired by Classical, Gothic, and Renaissance architectural styles of previous centuries. Starting around 1930, it started taking on its own individual style, highly influenced by the Art Deco movement. The aim of Art Deco was to pay homage to the modern machine age by imbuing it with an original, non-traditional sense of luxury and opulence. Regular repetitions of clean, sharp geometric shapes; conventional, stylised motifs of animals and foliage; bold colours; and symmetry all epitomise this style. Towers used modern materials such as glass and plastics, as well as rich natural materials such as silver, chrome, jade, and ivory. Art Deco went out of style during World War II, but it saw a renewed interest starting in the late 60s and is still used in buildings today.

Big Ben (St. Stephen's Tower), C. Barry & A.W.N. Pugin, 1859
The Flatiron Building (Toronto), David Roberts Jr, 1892
Gillender Building, Charles Berg, Edward H. Clark, 1897
The Flatiron Building (New York), Daniel H. Burnham, 1902
Singer Building, Ernest Flagg, 1908
Metropolitan Life Tower, Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, 1909
The Sun Tower, T. Whiteway, 1912
Bankers Trust Tower, Shreve, Lamb, & Harmon, 1912
Woolworth Building, Cass Gilbert, 1913
Tribune Tower, Raymond Hood, John Mead Howells, 1922
American Radiator Building, Raymond Hood, 1924
Jewelers Building, Thielbar & Fugard, Giaver, Dinkelberg, 1926
Fred F. French Building, J. Sloan & M.T. Robertson, 1927
New York Life Insurance Building, Cass Gilbert, 1928
Marine Building, McCarter & Nairne, 1929
Pigott Building, Bernard and Fred Prack, 1929
Chanin Building, J. Sloan, M.T. Robertson, 1929
Chrysler Building, William van Allen, 1930
Terminal Tower, Graham, Anderson, Probst, & White, 1930
40 Wall Street, H. Craig Severance, Yasuo Matsui, 1930
Empire State Building, Shreve, Lamb, & Harmon, 1931
RCA Victor Building, Cross & Cross, 1931
American International, Clinton & Russell, Holton & George, 1932
Cathedral of Learning, U of Pittsburgh, Charles Klauder, 1937

A non-skyscraper favourite from this time period:
Dundurn Castle, Robert Wetherall, 1835

Modern

The post-World World II era saw the advent of modern skyscrapers. Most of these towers adhered to the International Style, the mantra of which was "form follows function" and not vice versa. Decorative design was no longer to be the main feature of skyscrapers. Architects were now designing towers to symbolise functionality, which in turn was meant to express the new spirit of modern "progress". These towers were simple and unadorned, rectangular in shape, and often clad with glass-curtain walls. They were often severe and imposing. Their functional quality was clearly expressed through visible heating/air conditioning grills and floors and roofs topped with mechanical equipment. Unfortunately, only some of these buildings managed to be elegant and aesthetically pleasing. Most of the towers were poorly proportioned carbon copies of the ideal prototypes, and eventually led to a public distaste for modern architecture. Below are some of my favourite modern skyscrapers (and also an art gallery). You will find that I love slender, slab-type towers with continuous glass curtain walls. Polished granite spandrels and mullions flush to windows is also a draw. The juxtaposition of some of these modern towers against historic masonry buildings is as attractive as their actual design.

United Nations Secretariat, UN Board of Design, Le Corbusier, 1950
BC Electric Building, Sharp Thompson Berwick & Pratt, 1955
Corning Glass Works Building, Harrison, Abramovitz & Abbe, 1959
CBS Building, Eero Saarinen, 1965
Macmillan Bloedel Building, Arthur Erickson, 1969
John Hancock Center, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1970*
Commerce Court West, I.M. Pei, 1973
Stelco Tower, Arthur C.F. Lau, 1973
First Interstate Bank Tower, Charles Luckman, 1974
Olympic Tower, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1976
John Hancock Tower, Henry Cobb, I.M. Pei, 1977
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Trevor Garwood-Jones, 1977

*See this nicely illustrated article on living and working in the Hancock:
"Chicago's Hancock Center", by A.R. Williams & Lynn Johnson,
National Geographic, February 1989, 175(2), pp. 175-185.

Other favourites to come:
Pan Am Building
US Steel Building (Pittsburgh)
One Penn Plaza
Transamerica Pyramid
One Astor Plaza
The Law Courts (Vancouver)
Lethbridge University Campus
Simon Fraser University Campus

Post-modern

Post-modern towers were a reaction against the stark simplicity and austerity of the highly functional yet anonymous skyscrapers of the Modernist era. The movement attempted to create new, distinct skyscrapers with their own unique, symbolic identities. Starting around the late 1970s, this was achieved in several ways. The severe, box-like shape of the International Style was adapted to yield towers with more whimsical shapes. To bridge past and future, other buildings incorporated contemporary styles and materials with allusions to neo-Classical, neo-Gothic, and neo-Renaissance architecture. Modern versions of Classical tripartite column design and Gothic ribbed vaults, turrets, spires, and stone cladding (instead of glass) distinguished many of these stunning towers. Starting around the 1990s, Post-modernism took on a Deconstructivist flavour, yielding futuristic, often jarring skyscraper shapes and facades. Here are some of my favourites:

IBM Building, Edward Larrabee Barnes, 1983
PPG Place, Philip Johnson, John Burgee, 1984
Maison des Co-operants, Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden, 1986
One Atlantic Center, Philip Johnson, John Burgee, 1987
Leo Burnett Building, Cohen Marreto, 1989
900 N. Michigan Building, Perkins & Will, 1989
Mellon Bank Center, Kohn Pedersen Fox, 1991
77 West Wacker Drive, DeStefano & Partners, 1992
Conde Nast Building, Fox & Fowle, 1999
 

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Special thanks to the following individuals for allowing me use of their personal photographs:

Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton College, http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/
Jeffery Howe, Boston College, http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/archives.html
Patrick Beckers, http://www.skyscraperpicture.com
Scott Murphy, http://members.aol.com/smurphy109/sm.htm

For more information on any of the structures listed on this page, I highly recommend visiting
http://www.skyscrapers.com.

Detailed definitions of skyscraper styles
from Frommer's Traveler's Guide to Art & Architecture
© 2000-2003 by Wiley Publishing, Inc.

"Early skyscrapers (1880-1920). The invention of the skyscraper can be traced directly to the use of cast iron in the 1840s for storefronts, such as those seen in New York's SoHo. Experimentation with cast and wrought iron in the construction of interior skeletons eventually allowed buildings to rise higher. (Previously, buildings were restricted by the height supportable by their load-bearing walls.) In Chicago, important technical innovations—involving safety elevators, electricity, fireproofing, foundations, plumbing, and telecommunications—combined with advances in skeletal construction to create a new building type, the skyscraper. These buildings were spacious, cost-effective, efficient, and quickly erected—in short, the perfect architectural solution for America's growing downtowns.

Solving the technical problems of the skyscraper did not resolve how the building should look. Most solutions relied on historical precedents, including decoration reminiscent of the Gothic, Romanesque (a style characterized by the use of rounded arches), or beaux arts.

Other features of the early skyscrapers include:

• A rectangular shape with a flat roof
• Tripartite division of the facade, similar to that of a column, with a base (usually of two stories), shaft (midsection with a repetitive window pattern), and capital (typically an elaborate, terra-cotta cornice)
• Exterior expression of the building's interior skeleton through an emphasis on horizontal and vertical elements
• Use of terra cotta, a light and fireproof material that could be cast in any shape and attached to the exterior
• New York's early skyscrapers relied heavily on historical decoration.

Art Deco (1925-1940). A decorative style that took its name from a Paris exposition in 1925. The jazzy style embodied the idea of modernity. One of the first widely accepted styles not based on historic precedents, it influenced all areas of design from jewelry and household goods to cars, trains, and ocean liners.

Art Deco buildings are characterized by a linear, hard edge, or angular composition often with a vertical emphasis and highlighted with stylized decoration. The New York zoning law of 1916, which required set backs in buildings above a certain height to ensure that light and air could reach the street, gave the style its distinctive profile. Other important features include:

• An emphasis on geometric form
• Strips of windows with decorated spandrels (the horizontal panel below a window) that added to the sense of verticality
• Use of hard-edged, low-relief ornamentation around doors and windows
• Frequent use of black and silver tones
• Decorative motifs of parallel straight lines, zigzags, chevrons, and stylized florals

Gothic Revival (1830-1860). The term Gothic Revival refers to a literary and aesthetic movement of the 1830s and 1840s that occurred in England and later in the United States. A pervasive current within this movement was known as Romanticism. Adherents believed that the wickedness of modern times could benefit with a dose of "goodness" presumed to have been associated with the Christian medieval past. Architecture was chosen as one of the vehicles to bring this message to the people. The revival style was used for everything from timber cottages to stone castles and churches. Some structures had only one or two Gothic features, most commonly a steeply pitched roof or pointed arches, whereas other buildings, usually churches, were accurate copies of English Gothic structures.

A derivative style called Victorian Gothic (1860-90) became popular after the Civil War. Influenced by the writings of English theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900), this style is distinguished by contrasting colors of brick and stone in bold polychromatic patterns and decorative bands. This more freewheeling interpretation of the Gothic was well suited to the florid decorative approach of the late 19th century.

Gothic Revival is characterized by:

• Asymmetry
• Pointed arches
• Large pointed windows with tracery and colored glass
• Steeply pitched roofs
• A curvilinear gingerbread trim along the eaves (on houses)
• Towers
• Battlements (a fortified wall with alternate solid parts and openings; used for defense or a decorative motif)
• An overall picturesque quality

Modern/International Style (1920-1945). In 1932, the Museum of Modern Art hosted its first architecture exhibit, titled simply "Modern Architecture." Displays included images of International Style buildings from around the world, many designed by architects from Germany's Bauhaus, a progressive design school. The structures all shared a stark simplicity and vigorous functionalism, a definite break from historically based, decorative styles.

The International Style was popularized in the United States through the teachings and designs of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 1969), a German émigré based in Chicago. Interpretations of the "Miesian" International Style were built in most U.S. cities, including New York, as late as 1980. In the 1950s, erecting an office building in this mode made companies appear progressive. In later decades, after the International Style was a corporate mainstay, the style took on conservative connotations.

Features of the International Style as popularized by Mies include:

• A rectangular shape
• Frequent use of glass
• Balance and regularity, but not symmetry
• Horizontal bands of windows
• Windows meeting at corners
• Absence of ornamentation
• Clear expression of the building's form and function (the interior structure of stacked office floors is clearly visible, as are the locations of mechanical systems, such as elevator shafts and air-conditioning units)
• Placement, or cantilevering, of building on tall piers

Post-modern (1975-1990). After years of steel-and-glass office towers in the International Style, postmodernism burst on the scene in the 1970s with the reintroduction of historical precedents in architecture. With many feeling that the office towers of the previous style were too cold, postmodernists began to incorporate classical details and recognizable forms into their designs—often applied in outrageous proportions.

Characteristics of postmodern skyscrapers tend to include:

• An overall shape (or incorporation) of a recognizable object, not necessarily associated with architecture
• Classical details, such as columns, domes, or vaults, often oversized and used in inventive ways
• A distinctive profile in the skyline
• A use of stone rather than glass"