Architecture provides the background for most human activity, but buildings were very much in the foreground on Sept. 11, 2001. When the World Trade Center towers fell on live television that day, they were — and remain — the two tallest buildings to ever disappear from any city’s skyline.
Immediately after, there was much speculation about whether we would continue to build tall buildings. That morning, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill design partner Adrian Smith was meeting with Donald Trump Jr. to review plans for a 2,000-foot-tall Trump Tower in Chicago. Not only did the client and architect scale back the building’s height based on the events in New York, but also, the drawings for that scheme were never publicly released. As completed in 2009, Donald Trump’s Chicago building is officially 1,389 feet tall, although that’s to the tip of its spire; its highest occupied floor is at 1,116 feet, which puts its perceived height at about the same level as the Aon Center and 875 North Michigan Avenue.
The Chicago-based Council for Vertical Urbanism (CVU) is the arbiter of tall buildings throughout the world and has coined the term “supertall” for buildings between 300 and 599 meters in height (or 984 and 1,965 feet). On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, there were just over two dozen buildings in the world that the CVU characterized as supertall, including five structures in Chicago: the Sears Tower, now known as Willis Tower, at 1,451 feet; the Aon Center at 1,136 feet; the John Hancock Center, now known as 875 North Michigan Avenue, at 1,128 feet; the AT&T Corporate Center, now known as the Franklin Center, at 1,007 feet; and Two Prudential Plaza, at 995 feet.
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And taller buildings have continued to rise in the years since 9/11. The Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest, was completed almost a decade later in Dubai, designed by the same folks as Chicago’s Willis Tower, 875 North Michigan, Franklin Center and Trump Tower. Chicago has increased its supertall buildings from five to seven with the addition of Trump’s building and The St. Regis Chicago.
Building codes for tall buildings have evolved in the past quarter century, and today’s skyscrapers incorporate many advancements that make new buildings safer. But most of these elements, such as larger and stronger fire stairs, remain largely hidden from view during everyday use.
The 48-story-tall 71 South Wacker, developed by the Pritzker family, was the first major Chicago commercial building to be designed in Chicago following 9/11. The clients scrapped a more architecturally ambitious scheme by Norman Foster in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks. As completed in 2005 based on a design by Pei Cobb Freed partner Henry Cobb, the tower has a double-height glazed lobby along Monroe that’s protected by large planters that can thwart a vehicular attack. Airport-style security screening was neatly integrated into the low-slung bustle on the north side of the tower.
At the Federal Center on Dearborn Street, post-9/11 security alterations have severely compromised one of the city’s most powerful urban designs. The three-building complex was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 1960s as a tour de force of urban planning in which almost every line in each of the three buildings — the Kluczynski Federal Building, the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse and the Loop Station Post Office — is tied together across two city blocks through a gridded paving pattern.
Mies was replacing a monumental domed neoclassical masonry structure that Henry Ives Cobb designed in 1896. In bold contrast, Mies’ steel and glass structures express an open and transparent federal government that transcends function to create a neat and orderly series of civic spaces. The Federal Center as designed and built was an exemplar of a truly democratic architecture. The post-9/11 bollards that now line the streets are made of the same granite as the plaza, but they impede the overall grid and destroy the elegant integration of the complex that was essential to Mies’ original vision.
Trump’s plans on 9/11 for a 2,000-foot-tall building would have created not just Chicago’s tallest building but also would have reclaimed the “world’s tallest” mantle for the city. In the years since, only Santiago Calatrava’s ill-fated Chicago Spire would propose that lofty a peak in 2005. And not only has Chicago given up the chase to be home to the tallest building in the world; we’ve also built just two supertall buildings in this period. All the while, New York — the site of the attacks — has built 15 such structures, although none have been proposed to be the world’s tallest.
That race — as well as large quantities of supertall and even megatall (taller than 2,000 feet) buildings — has continued mostly in the Middle East, East Asia and Southeast Asia. Chicago retains a hand in many of these structures that have begun in the offices of our architects and engineers. These include the current tallest (Burj Khalifa, Dubai, 2,717 feet tall by SOM) and the building that’s expected to surpass it (Kingdom Tower, Jeddah, 3,281 feet tall by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture).
All buildings hold some symbolism; to the 9/11 terrorists, the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers were a symbol of America more powerful than most Americans would have recognized at the time. Their erasure has given them even more power in our collective imagination.
The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world for a very short period of time — from their completion in 1973 until they were surpassed by the Sears Tower the following year. By 2001, they were just the fifth and sixth tallest buildings in the world, although they remained the tallest in New York.
Chicago and New York’s now 25-year absence from the highest reaches of the height race is evidence of culturally and financially mature cities that can (and should) focus on building more qualitative and sustainable metropolises rather than chasing the metric of height.
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Our skylines remain distinctive — and tall — without going much taller than where we are now.
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan’s biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.
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