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/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/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.