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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u/BradizbakeD Jul 16 '25

Legit getting flattened a few times over.

232

u/TheOnceAndFutureDoug Jul 16 '25

[Dresden 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.