Standing at 1,022 feet, Waterline will be the tallest tower in Texas when it opens in 2026. Photo courtesy of Atchain.
The recent announcement of the construction of the tallest skyscraper in Texas came as a surprise to many. Not necessarily the building itself, but the place of construction is Austin, not Houston or Dallas. A sure sign that the capital has joined the civil race to build the tallest building, thus earning the title of tallest city in the Lone Star State.
This striving for the higher has manifested itself in civilization ever since the pyramids rose in Egypt and Mexico, Guatemala and Belize in America.
Cathedrals in Europe and the United States competed for the tallest cathedral for centuries, until the late 19th century when the 548-foot Philadelphia City Hall, the 555-foot Washington Monument, and the 984-foot Eiffel Tower competed in the world. tallest person.
Texas entered the skyscraper game relatively quickly in 1908 when a 190-foot-tall, 15-story Praetorian House building opened in Dallas, which was demolished in 2013. Houston already boasts the eight-story First National Bank Building (completed 1905). The building was designed by Sanguinet and Staats, an architectural firm responsible for many high-rise buildings in Texas in the early 20th century, and later became the Lomas and Nettleton Building. (Located at Main Street and Franklin Avenue, today with residential lofts.) By 1910, Houston also had the 124-foot 10-story 711 Main Building and the 302-foot-tall 23-story Carter Building, allowing Houston to acquire the title of Texas’s most mountain city.
Two years later, honor has returned to Dallas with the opening of the 25-story Adolph Hotel, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this month, October 29th. In 1925, the Adolf Hotel gave way to the Magnolia Building, the tallest building in Dallas (and Texas), with Magnolia Oil’s neon Pegasus logo atop a 399-foot, 27-story tower. (The building was recently announced to be undergoing a major renovation, including adding three more floors.)
Houston regained the title of tallest in 1927 when the 410-foot, 31-story Italian Renaissance Niels-Esperson Building was completed, followed two years later by the 37-story, 428-foot Art Deco Bay Building. Houston lasted until 1943, when the Mercantile National Bank Building, a 31-story, 523-foot tower with a distinctive bell spire, opened in Dallas.
Dallas – Republican Bank (1954; 36 floors, 602 feet) Houston – Humble Building (1963; 44 floors, 606 feet) Dallas – First National Bank Building (1965; 52 floors, 628 feet) Houston – One Shell Plaza (1970; 50ft) stories 714ft)
One Shell is still slightly taller than Dallas’ new tallest building, the 710-foot, 56-story First International Building built in 1974. But when, in 1985, the 74-story, 921-foot height of the Bank of America Plaza skyscraper—Dallas’s tallest skyscraper—Houston again surpassed its archrival with the 1,002-foot, 75-story Texas Commercial Tower, which is now the JPMorgan Chase Building—the tallest. skyscraper in Texas since it was built in 1982. Hey!
That honor is about to change, and neither Dallas nor Houston played this time. Enter Austin.
The capital was late in the race for the fast skyscrapers. Until 1974, the Texas State Capitol (at 302.64 feet “from the south front to the top of the Liberty Star”) was the tallest building in Austin, largely because the city passed an ordinance to keep it. Dominant buildings on the city skyline. . It was complemented by the 307-foot-tall 29-story University of Texas Main Building (also known as the Tower), followed in 1972 by the 307-foot-tall Dobie Center, also located on the UT campus. By the mid-1980s, Austin was home to more than a dozen skyscrapers, with the 600-foot Capitol Building at the top, until the 515-foot Frost Bank Building appeared in 2004.
Meanwhile, construction in Dallas and Houston came to a virtual halt. Instead of chasing higher heights, Big D built new towers ranging from 30 to 40 stories, until the 42-story museum tower broke through in 2013. And after its peak in the 1980s, Houston experienced the collapse of the savings and loan economy, followed by an FAA ban on buildings higher than 75 stories in the central business district because it was in takeoff and landing mode at Hobby Airport. Since the opening of the 64-story, 901-foot tall Transco Tower near the Gallery in 1982, no significant towers have been built outside of downtown.
Fast forward to Austin around 2010, when housing and technology began to dominate the local skyscraper boom. Over 20 steel and glass towers were built, topped by the city’s reigning champion Independence (also known as the “Jenga Tower”), 58 stories and 690 feet tall, and the 56-story, 683-foot Austonion, with a distinctive crescent-shaped pinnacle. .
Why the sudden boom of high-rise buildings? “I think the reason they’re higher in Austin is because it’s small and densely populated,” said Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lanster, who teaches architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington and is a Loeb fellow on the faculty architecture at Harvard University. . “This means that the land is very valuable, which makes it economically viable to build very tall buildings.”
Also, skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas tend to focus more on style than height. “There is no emphasis on the word ‘tallest’ because buildings are currently being built by investment groups rather than individuals or companies, and the moniker ‘tallest’ can be attractive to them,” he said.
Lumster cites Houston’s Pennzoil Place, which remains one of the state’s most revered skyscrapers, as an example of style, not growth. “[Then Pennzoil CEO] Hugh Liedtke was specifically authorized to build the building, and he didn’t choose ‘tallest’ because he knew there would always be other buildings that would surpass it,” he said. “So Pennzoil Place focused on quality and difference [rather than growth]. It worked.”
So, in Austin, the ascent to the top continues. Next year, both of the city’s tallest buildings will be replaced by a residential and office tower at Sixth Street and Guadeloupe Street, which will rise to 66 floors and 875 feet. The building will have a main tenant, the parent company of technology company Meta, Facebook and Instagram. That’s a high figure, but it still won’t be the highest in Texas in a few years.
This honor will go to Waterline, a 73-story, 1,022-foot high residential hotel office building at 98 Red River. Its scheduled completion date is mid-2026. I know this position well. This place used to be a trendy two-story white-clap boarding house where I rented a cheap $80 a month office in the 1980s. This is old Austin. Future inhabitant – New Texas – sparkling, bright, to the sky.
Will it be the top of a Texas skyscraper? Given its history, there is a good chance that a taller tower will be on the way. The short answer to why “money,” Lanster said. “Or, as the historian and Skyscraper Museum founder Carol Willis put it, “Form follows finance.”