what's the best skyscraper in the usa?

[paperboy15 4]

Bank of America Tower in Seattle, WA (or as I prefer, the old name: Columbia Seafirst Center)

[Jersey_17011 0]

I would have to say....

The World Trade Center, even thought it isn't here anymore i would still have to say the WTC, there was just something about it, that was what made New York City New York City! I can't wait for the new tower- Freedom Tower to go up it looks amazing and i think it will bring an update to the Manhattan skyline adding a more modern looking financial district

or the chrysler building, it is so well kept, i'm so glad they restored it to its former glory

or the Woolworth Building, that building is amazingly beautiful

[manman99 2]

Micah: I have realized that I have violated that rule and I am sorry and Im not aloud to go on the chat room.

[ILL Tonkso 1,239]

Washington Mutual, Seattle, i love it.

[HONG KONG 74]

There are many very beautiful buildings in America, however none is more beautiful than the Chrysler Building.IMO

[Chris M 406]

Most of the Post-Modern architecture in Atlanta is my favourite.  That is the BOA, SunTrust Plaza, One Atlantic, and Promenade 2. 

http://www.gpsinformation.org/jack/photo-test/pics/skyline-7.jpg

http://wallpaper.digiocto.com/Gebouwen/Atlanta%20Skyline%20at%20Sunset,%20Georgia.jpg

[Jasoncw 11,949]

My fave is probably the Guardian Building (which is also my avatar).

I also like the Penobscot Building.

Another fave is the Buhl Building.

Both of those buildings were designed by Wirt C. Rowland, who's probably my favorite architect.

I also like the GE/RCA Building (Rockefeller center).

I also like newer buildings, but as a whole, individual ones don't stand out too much (or they stand out for the wrong reasons).  I like Simcoe Place, but there doesn't seem to be too many pictures of it around the internet.

[ACEfanatic 7]

Woolworth Building in NYC.

Though, I like most older styles - Art Deco, Chicago School, Neo-Gothic.

PoMo had a shot, but while they generally have decent form, the scale and detail falls flat. A failed dream, really... almost as much as International Style.

-ACE

[Micah 16]

Micah: I have realized that I have violated that rule and I am sorry and Im not aloud to go on the chat room.quote>

It's okay. Oh, and you can't go to chat? Sorry to hear that.

[paperboy15 4]

So many in this thread like the Chrysler Building...I've always found it atrocious, lol.

[mightygoose 92]

the chrysler is immense although my favourite overall is the john hancock centre, its complex lattice fascade is awesome

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I like the Chrysler Building, but imo it's too big to take in as a person.  It should be smaller, lol.  A lot of people consider it to be one of the greatest skyscrapers of all time.

[usad25 0]

 I think that the Sears Tower or Empire State building has won. Or well maybe not.....

[dgrid 0]

I'd have to go with Empire St Bldg.  As far as visitors, I was there in late Dec.

Transamerica Pyramid  is cool tho!

florent-   Now that we have a "list", you should set up a vote.

[axelvan 0]

seagram building

[topcliff 1]

I've got a building no one here has heard of: EPA Central Headquarters, Sacramento, CA 95818. TopCliff

P.S. If you want to know what it looks like, go to Emporis.com, or get your ass on an American Airlines flight SIX! Funny, isn't it?

[Wolf_pt 7]

US Bank Tower,Atlanta 

[Yoman3 5]

Thats not in the US! Kayean_Henser

Now for my favorite building I am going to have to go with one that not many ppl know about. A very beautiful building indeed. The Bank of America Tower NY.



Its not built yet but is being built.

[Duke87 1,070]

...I think I'm gonna have to go with "Empire State Building" on this one, too. The new Freedom tower they recently started building looks promising, thpough. And shiny. Don't forget shiny.

[johnwinston 3]

I vote for the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco !

[Haljackey 17,398]

I was in New York, USA on business this April, and the I saw the most amazing biulding ever made during my trip.  

It looks like this.  Does anyone know what its called?

(took these pics myself)

Its the cool looking blue one!

[GAT-X105 3]

That's the Hearst Building. It's fairly new and houses the Hearst publishing company. I believe it was built on top of an older 6 or so story building.

[josefmayor 8]

My favorite sky scraper is the Am South Bank Tower in Downtown Tampa.

it's the tallest here, right now. Trump Towers is going to surpass it. But hey, whatevuh.

I really like the Chrystler building too.

[usad25 0]

I also like alot of Detroits builds seeing how I live about 60 miles away.

Yup totally motown.

[hamsterTK 93]

My favorite is the keyhole building(jp morgan center) in downtown dallas:

I used to hope that dusktrooper might do his take on this building one day(since he's a big fan of postmodern buildings), but since he's no longer doing Batting i guess we'll never see that.

[johnwinston 3]

PPG Place, Pittsburgh PA

[MayorTim 16]

Burj Dubai.

[Yoman3 5]

Mayor tim thats not in the USA

[deckone 1]

Gotta say anything in Atlanta, the explosion of skyscrapes there is truely amazing. I have to break it down by areas..

Downtown (toss-up)

191 Peachtree - http://tinyurl.com/o99u9

or

Suntrust Plaza - http://tinyurl.com/pbse3

Midtown

1180 Peachtree - http://tinyurl.com/s5skx

Buckhead

2828 Ptree Condos - http://tinyurl.com/qoq6v (favorite until 'The Mansion' is built)

Sandy Springs

King & Queen Buildings aka Concourse 1 - http://tinyurl.com/n58gt (tallest suburban buildings in the US, and they're twin towers!)

Overall Best Building in Atlanta, Bank Of America Tower!!  Tallest outside NY/Chi

[Odainsaker 2,137]

Cool thread!

I always wondered what that building was in Jasoncw's avatar...never did I expect it was such a colorful arabesque-byzantine-mayan art deco creation.

Yes, the Chrysler Building will likely remain a perrenial favorite, for it is such a flamboyantly freewheeling landmark of its age.  Pity William Van Alen designed precious little else, though he did give us this greatest of legacy skyscrapers.

For a less popularly known but familiar favorite of mine, I offer the Tower Life Building, a charmingly decorous muted-gothic skyscraper from San Antonio, Texas.  Here is a cool view looking down St. Mary's Street from around 1978...I just love how the wedding cake profile looms over the truly gritty urban scene.  Too bad a lot of these older buildings have either been stripped of their decorative texture or wholly replaced by modern construction.

The building comes from 1929, one of the last in the optimistic building-boom just months before the Crash and Depression.  Here's another image captured by viewerblur from www.flickr.com  For a such a modest city, this a very sculptural and photogenic tower.  It's hard to believe the radio mast is a much later addition which required reworking of the roof cupola and flagpole, for the syringe profile is so striking.  Yes, in a more innocent and frivolous era, they flew large patriotic flags from a flagpole on the roof spire.

It is hard to make them out in this image, but those are fully in-the-round sculpted gargoyles poking out along the piers and buttresses.  Grotesque masks and medieval caricatures further adorn of the base and church-like vaulted interior.

Omigosh, having mentioned the onset of the Depression months after this building was finished, check out the image below.

Yes, this slum (called La Villita) in the very heart of the city is only a single block from the tower, which we can see towering above with its original cupola.  This is such a great image of the urban decay in that desperate period, especially when so harsly contrasted with the exuberant optimism that built the lofty tower only a few hundred feet away.  To the right we can see the art deco Alamo National Bank, which also comes from 1929 and would have formed with the Tower Life Building a new progressive cluster of fanciful landmark skyscrapers and luxury hotels in what was at the time Texas's leading city.  Those plans disintegrated as the economy plummetted, and it would take the WPA in 1939 to forcibly clear out these slums and renew La Villita into an artist's commune (they actually called it "eviction-by-convenience"!?!).  I love how this image thus frames the death of the old era of historicist decorative skyscrapers, their underlying values discredited in the brave new modern world to follow.  Sadly, famed local architects Ayers & Ayers, for whom this glittering tower remains the crowning achievement, would not built anything like this again.

Lastly, in the building's more hopeful guise, let us not forget the beacon flood-lighting scheme, which was intended from the start to be gleamingly luminous with its colors rotated seasonally.  Now, imagine the slum scene in the photo above, but with the wedding-cake tower lit up this flashily.

Nope, not very big or superlative, but popularly bright and exsquisite.  The grandiose skyscraper develpment project of the the 1920's was never revived, and the Tower Life Building stands as a lone and singular landmark nestled among other low-rise historically preserved buildings.  San Antonio has more recently built a number of other larger towers, but this still remains the signature skyscraper.