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Pittsburgh's US Steel tower (840') Has an exoskeleton and is sheathed in Corten Steel which is a non rust steel developed by US Steel Corp. The building was the largest constructed outside of NYC and Chicago in the 1970's and still has the largest occupied floor space @ 1 acre per floor. The US Steel Tower still has the largest and highest rooftop.
It says a lot, but the most obvious thing is that Boston isn't hung up on breaking that nearly 50 year-old height record. Some of it is zoning (Logan Airport's runway alignments restrict building heights in downtown/Back Bay, though there are 1,000+ foot zones). But a lot of it is NIMBYism. Boston has both a very historic urban core occupied many affluent people who have been there for generations and it has had some pretty bad examples of "urban renewal" doing damage to the built environment (see: West End, State Services Center, Government Center, etc.) which has had a lasting impact on attitudes toward development here. So people in Boston are very resistant to the construction of large buildings, and heights seem to draw the most ire. Proposing a new tallest appears to be a nonstarter (though the city's 3rd, 4th, and 5th tallest were all built in the last 7 years).
Plaza Tower in Tyler, TX is the tallest building in NE Texas. It's 20 stories tall, and it was built many decades ago. Not sure when but it's full of Art Deco decor so I'm figuring it was built in the early 20th century. It is an office building.
Philadelphia's tallest building, the Comcast Technology Center (formerly the Comcast Technology and Innovation Center), was completed in 2018 at a height of 1141'. The CTC is not only the tallest building in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, but also the tallest building outside of New York and Chicago. For me, the CTC marked a symbolic return to the days where Philadelphia was the clear-cut #3 city in the country. The CTC also makes a strong statement that Comcast is large and in charge in Philly. Not only did Comcast build the current tallest building in the city, but it also built the former tallest building (the Comcast Center, completed in 2008 at a height of 975').
As an interesting side note, the completion of those two buildings will also represent the time where we broke the curse of Billy Penn. In short, Willard Rouse broke the Gentleman's Agreement in 1987 when he had One Liberty Place constructed at a height taller than that of William Penn's hat atop City Hall. This event activated the curse, leading to a prolonged drought of playoff success in Philly sports. When the Comcast Center was constructed, a small statue of William Penn was placed at the top of the building, making his return as Philly's highest affixed object. The Phillies proceeded to win the World Series in 2008 (a very exciting time to be 13!). A similar statue was placed atop the CTC prior to Super Bowl VII in 2018, leading to the Eagles upsetting the Patriots (a very exciting time to be 22 and able to drink!). I hope we build a new tallest tower again soon!
Buffalo's tallest is the 40 story Seneca One building, and its history is a reflection of the ascendance, decline, and eventual beginnings of rebirth of the city. It was constructed in 1974 as the headquarters of Marine Midland Bank, Buffalo's largest bank, and one of the largest in the US at the time. By the 1980s HSBC had acquired 51% of the assets, and for a time Buffalo served as HSBC's North American headquarters. By the 1990s the HSBC HQ moved to NYC, and concurrently the 148 year old Marine Midland banking name was wiped away replaced with HSBC. By the 2010s, HSBC closed all of its retail banking operations in NY, and vacated the building along with 90% of other tenants, including the Canadian Consulate which was permanently closed in Buffalo. With downtown vacancies high, there were calls by some locals to tear down the tower as it was considered a white elephant.
In 2016, however, Doug Jemal, a Washington DC developer visiting Buffalo on unrelated business, saw potential in the vacant tower, and by its extremely depressed cost, and took ownership of the building, renovating much of the interior and exterior (including drastic changes to the exterior color), including adding dozens of apartments to the property along with other amenities. Today, the tower is nearly 100% leased, serves as the home of M&T Bank's Tech Hub, and carries the M&T Bank on the building. With the fortuitous arrival of Jemal, he has since taken ownership and management of multiple properties downtown and in the Buffalo area, and has developed hundreds of additional apartment units, with many hundreds more under construction or planned, including revival of the Hotel Statler and portions of the HH Richardson complex.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Here in Sammamish WA with 65,000 population, the tallest building is a fairly new (2018) 5 story apartment building, which is the way we like it. No skyscrapers to block the view of the mountains, woods, lakes and valley below our plateau, no big commercial properties. Just residential and 3 small strip malls.
The tallest building in Oakland is the Ordway Bldg, 404 ft tall, a very elegant metallic tower that is the headquarters of Kaiser Permanente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordway_Building
From 1898 until 1971, city hall. Three feet taller than the train station completed in 1875.
From 71 to 91 it was one of two office buildings.
Since 91 it was a 24 story apartment tower.
However Holy Cross's 1975 rec center/basketball arena roof has a higher elevation because campus is on top of a hill.
Even though I don't live there, I've visited it, and I'll say the Willis Tower truly represented the pinnacle of late 20th century American dominance, being the world's tallest building at 1,454 feet from 1974 to 1998, not including the antennas, with the groundbreaking occurring at the end of the long post-WWII boom, and lasting until the Petronas Towers passed them at the time that the Internet was exploding worldwide and upending traditional retailers such as Sears, whom which the tower was originally named until July 16, 2009, about four years before I visited it but still refer to it as the "Old Sears Tower". 2009 was around the time Sears hit the point that the retailer was going to not survive, and this parallels the rise of Amazon and other online retail. It's still the tallest building in the city, but given that it still is after nearly 50 years, shows that Chicago, which was the clear #2 after NYC and a clear top ten city in the world when it was built is slowly losing its prominence, just like all of the pop culture that went along with the city when it was the king of the skyscrapers. But it's still a major force to be reckoned with.
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