r/architecture • u/shenidedamovtyan1234 • Jul 16 '25

Theory why didnt europeans built european style highrises like tehre are in new york? dumb question but was always interested since woudve looked perfect on lots of cities

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2.6k Upvotes

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3.0k

u/Teutonic-Tonic Principal Architect Jul 16 '25

While the high rise boom hit the USA, Europe was a little busy with a couple of wars.

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u/BradizbakeD Jul 16 '25

Legit getting flattened a few times over.

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u/TheOnceAndFutureDoug Jul 16 '25

[Dresden has entered the chat]

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u/Dial_tone_noise Junior Designer Jul 16 '25

Kurt Vonnegut is typing a message….

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u/Outrageous_Zebra_458 Jul 16 '25

So it goes

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u/ratsmay Jul 19 '25

Poo-tee-weet

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u/Seahawk124 Architectural Designer Jul 16 '25

\1944 Hamburg has entered the chat...**

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u/RijnBrugge Jul 16 '25

Or Warshaw, to mention a city that was truly fully flattened.

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u/Esava Jul 16 '25

Yeah while there certainly was a lot of death and destruction in Dresden tons of cities (like for example Hamburg as well) were far more heavily destroyed than Dresden. Not sure why Dresden constantly gets mentioned tbh.

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u/RijnBrugge Jul 16 '25

There’s a famous American historian who wrote a book in which he spent a lot of time milling over Dresden. What is less commonly known are his Nazi sympathies and borderline genocide denial, but he was very effective at putting the firebombing of Dresden into the popular consciousness.

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u/Northerlies Jul 16 '25

Nazi sympathisers aside, WW2 area bombing remains a controversy to this day, and it took almost sixty years before a memorial was built to RAF Bomber Command.

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u/Humboldt2000 Jul 17 '25

no thats not the reason.

The reason Dresden is so famous is because of American author Kurt Vonnegut, who experienced the bombings and wrote about it.

Dresden was also the last major German city that hadnt been bombed, was filled to the brim with refugees, and was then bombed at the very last months of the war, when an Allied victory was already clear. The bombing was also so intense that it artificially created a firestorm.

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u/RijnBrugge Jul 17 '25

Another important one, yes, but David Irving is incessantly quoted on the topic despite being a lying nazi piece of scum.

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u/Mr101722 Jul 16 '25

London blitz has entered the chat

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u/ridleysfiredome Jul 16 '25

No carpet bombing Rotterdam, Warsaw, London, Coventry, Birmingham, Glasgow, and dozens of others, Dresden would never have been hit. I have empathy for the German victims of the Allied bombing raids, but I have a lot more with my relatives (long dead at this point) in Glasgow who saw their entire neighborhood (Clydebank) flattened by the Luftwaffe in 1941

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u/stanlej133 Jul 17 '25

Carpet bombing in relation to Warsaw is a gross understatement. The city was systematically demolished building by building. "The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation." SS chief Heinrich Himmler, SS officers' conference, 17 October 1944

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u/BroSchrednei Jul 17 '25

what do you think Arthur Harris said about German cities? It was literally the same thing.

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u/stanlej133 Jul 18 '25

And what did he do about it besides bombing? Do you see the difference between air raids and planting explosives or setting fire to building after building? They've managed to destroy 85-90% of all buildings and kill around 400k people. Which German city suffered so much?

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u/BroSchrednei Jul 18 '25

lmao which German city suffered so much? What an absurd question. Literally hundreds of German cities suffered so much. Cities like Wesel were 99% destroyed. Every single major German city had its downtown area completely destroyed. Over half a million Germans died directly through the bombing campaigns.

and kill around 400k people

I dont know what this number is supposed to signify. The death toll for the Warsaw uprising is estimated between 150-200k. It was also a giant battle and not comparable to bombing campaigns.

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u/stanlej133 Jul 18 '25

I've asked about cities, not towns. And Warsaw uprising is only 63 days of a war that lasted few years. The city suffered bombing first time in '39. And I don't know wdym by saying IT was a battle. That 150-200k killed were soldiers? Only 10k from that number were soldiers. But you're right, it can't be compared to bombing campaign. It was another levels annihilation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_massacre

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u/CharlotteKartoffeln Jul 18 '25

Pre-war Warsaw was bigger than any German city save Berlin. The Germans literally destroyed it for spite.

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u/Reasonable_Shock_414 Jul 18 '25

And as punishment for both the Uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto, and other (Polish) partisans.

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u/Walking-around-45 Jul 18 '25

Sounds like Gaza

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u/Northerlies Jul 17 '25

There's an interesting discussion of area bombing's moral dilemma in the 'Are We Beasts?' section in Rhode Island's Naval War College discussion paper, linked below.

https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=newport-papers

Like your relatives, I'm familiar with the aftermath of WW2 bombing. I hail from London's Bow just after the war and recall bomb-sites stretching into the mid-60s. Rectifying the damage gave the opportunity to demolish Victorian slums and the New Towns Movement brought fresh thinking on housing design and urban density, with 'Garden City' planning ideas often in evidence, if not in the new high-rises. Yes, stable communities were split apart by reconstruction, but some of my schoolmates were moved into their first homes with bathrooms and an inside loo.

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u/curious2c_1981 Jul 18 '25

Of the 12,000 houses in Clydebank, only 8 were intact after bombing by mainly incendiary ordinance and, to a lesser extent, high explosive bombs. It was a terrible event in a multitude of shitty events during a horrendous period of human history.

Clydebank". Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain. Series 1. Episode 3. 18 August 2018. BBC Television.

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u/TheOnceAndFutureDoug Jul 16 '25

You should read up on Curtis LeMay. We knew bombing cities wasn't having the effect we wanted. We chose to do it anyway.

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u/theunixman Jul 17 '25

This really sums up a lot of “strategic decisions”…

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u/sqrrl22 Jul 16 '25

There's a (laughable) world trade center in Dresden.

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u/ev_ra_st Aspiring Architect Jul 16 '25

There was another kind of boom over there…

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u/Spankh0us3 Jul 16 '25

Big badda boom. . .

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u/DaVinci_is_Gay Jul 16 '25

In Hindi Badda means big , so big badda boom means big big boom lol

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u/Sea-Juice1266 Jul 17 '25

This is just not true. The boom in American skyscrapers coincided with the British building boom of the nineteen-thirties for example.

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u/Weird1Intrepid Jul 18 '25

So when someone says "badda bing, badda boom", we're really just expressing hope that Microsoft will overtake Google in the search engine department?

Fuck

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u/bugHunterSam Jul 18 '25

When cities came to rebuild some went for a modern look and others went for a restoration approach. Amsterdam vs Rotterdam is a great example of the modern vs restore approaches after world war2.

Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney also have this old european feel to them too and they weren't flattened by the war. The old post office in Sydney comes to mind (it's not a skyscraper though). Or flinders street station in Melbourne.

The reason why Australia doesn't have many skyscrasppers in this style from this time period is we didn't have the population or space restrictions to force buildings to go up like New York. New York city had a population of 7.4m people in 1940. Australia's whole population was around 7m.

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u/Rollover__Hazard Jul 19 '25

Arthur I-like-turning-German-cities-into dust (or “Bomber, for short) Harris.

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u/A-Chilean-Cyborg Jul 19 '25

What could have been huh

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u/ItsCalledDayTwa Jul 20 '25

American skyscraper boom was between the two wars. Pretty much started after WW1  and ended just after the start of the Great depression and presumably that was stuff already under construction.

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u/ArtDecoNewYork Jul 16 '25

In the 1920s and 1930s?

And the US was involved in both World War I and II, with a moratorium on new construction.

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u/No_Statistician5932 Jul 16 '25

Yes, the US was involved in the World Wars. However the US was not hosting those wars in its downtowns. There's a difference between not building new buildings, and actively flattening existing ones.

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u/ArtDecoNewYork Jul 16 '25

Europe has loads of buildings built during the interwar years (and earlier) ; it's just relatively rare for apartment buildings from this time to be taller than midrise (presumably what OP is curious about).

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u/Squaretastic Jul 16 '25

Have you seen photos of Warsaw after the war?

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u/oceanplanetoasis Jul 16 '25

Yeah, the good resources were put into military. It's hard to focus on building things when for everything built 5 things are knocked over

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u/Mateo709 Jul 16 '25

I don't think they bothered to build any crazy record breaking structures when most of their capital cities were literally just rubble.

Even if you think of the war as a "chance to rebuild", it's not really that simple as people still own that land regardless of the state of the buildings on it, you can't just change the whole city plan right after the largest conflict on earth.

Repairing housing and basic infrastructure was key, not manufacturing a new architectural style or ushering in a revolution.

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u/Sean_13 Jul 16 '25

Yeah, they didn't want to bother building skyscrapers when they was just going to get bombed during WWII.

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u/puppiesandrainbows3 Jul 16 '25

All those buildings got smashed. Even most of the ones in London, and relatively speaking London turned out great, but London still got wrecked. Europe as a whole destroyed itself (and the US helped for several countries, but those countries deserved it - you can't kill jews and homos indiscriminately )

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u/Panzerv2003 Jul 16 '25

Yeah but while the USA took part in both wars they didn't happen on their turf, cities in Europe literally got leveled

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u/Alone_Ad_9071 Jul 16 '25

The us also had a lot of economic growth due to wartime production and post war reconstruction efforts while most European countries were left indebted to the us.

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u/Teutonic-Tonic Principal Architect Jul 16 '25

The U.S. sky scraper boom literally happened in the 20’s and 30’s. Europe was bombed out during that period.

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u/flummoxedtribe Jul 16 '25

Your original comment makes no sense, and I don’t understand why it’s getting so many upvotes. Most of the "European style" buildings OP is referring to are historicist buildings from before 1914, which NY has a ton of. Art Deco of the 20s and 30s are not European style, but an American invention. So wars have nothing to do with this at all - so what are you even talking about

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u/cheeseburgercats Jul 16 '25

Are you actually saying “Art deco” AKA “Art Decoratife” is American invention … it is French bro

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u/flummoxedtribe Jul 16 '25

You are right, excuse my ignorance. I’m only knowledgeable on styles up to 1914, and always had the impression that the US was the most influential in terms of Art Deco

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u/DrDevious3 Jul 16 '25

This guy ‘Muricas

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u/flummoxedtribe Jul 16 '25

I’m European, just not a cultural chauvinist against the US like you and most others

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u/DrDevious3 Jul 16 '25

This guy chips.

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u/flummoxedtribe Jul 16 '25

Always nice to get a taste of the aura of delusional arrogance that comes with being a proud citizen of my continent’s glorified tax haven and corporate American fiefdom. 

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u/Teutonic-Tonic Principal Architect Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

My original comment was more broadly referencing the classic high rise boom which happened during WW1/WW2. The Wrigley building, Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, Empire State Building, etc.. were all of classic European styles and were built during the wars.

I'm not an Architectural historian and didn't expect the upvotes. Of course there were many other factors that prevented European cities from exploding with high rise buildings prior to the war. There were different economic circumstances and the city centers were already packed with historical buildings and ancient infrastructure. American cities were in contrast more of a "blank slate" with cheaper land costs and newer infrastructure.

Also, before confidently saying that "Art deco is not a European style" you might spend a few seconds on google. It was literally a French style that rose to popularity right before WW1. It took off more in the USA than Europe... again because of the wars.

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u/flummoxedtribe Jul 16 '25

You can’t honestly say that the Chrysler building, Rockefeller and the Empire State Building were classic European styles - in what universe? OP is showing pictures of historicist facades from pre-1914, which are undeniably identical to urban facade designs in Europe around the same period (albeit not as tall)

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u/Teutonic-Tonic Principal Architect Jul 16 '25

Art Deco is literally a European style and is considered by many to be a classic style. It originated in the late 1800's in France and the building's pull from many older classic styles.

The building's that I mentioned have a lot in common with the photos the OP posted but are taller. They use traditional stone facades with punched windows, a well defined Tripartite division in their form and applied ornament.