Review Essay: Perspectives on American Tall Buildings

Postwar studies of the skyscraper as an architectural type include Carl Condit, The Chicago School: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875-1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Paul Goldberger , The Skyscraper (New York: Knopf, 1982); Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen , The Skyward Trend of Thought: Five Essays on the Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988); Carol Willis , Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago (New York: Princeton Architectural Press , 1995); and Sarah Bradford Landau and Carl Condit , The Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913 ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).

On Mies and the tall building, see William H. Jordy , American Buildings and Their Architects, vol. 5, The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 221-77; Franz Schulze , Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), esp. 239-48, 270-83; and Phyllis Lambert , "Mies Immersion ," in Mies in America, ed. Phyllis Lambert (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 354-421.

Michael Sorkin , Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992).

On Le Corbusier's prototypical apartment block, the Unité d'Habitation at Marseilles, see, for example, "France Builds a Vertical City," Engineering News-Record 142 (1949 , June 2): 16-18. Mies's Seagram Building was similarly studied for the technical innovation of its exterior bronze mullions and lintel panels. See "Bronze-Clad Skyscraper," Engineering News-Record 156 (1956, March 8): 140; and "First Bronze Panels Are Placed," Engineering News-Record 157 (1956 , November 8): 24. These kinds of period accounts of building technology are helpfully accessed through the historical component of the database Engineering Village. On the effects of the war in the United States, see, for example, Donald Albrecht, ed., World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building Changed a Nation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

On Belluschi's Equitable Building, see Meredith L. Clausen , Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 164-72. On the United Nations, see Victoria Newhouse , Wallace K. Harrison , Architect (New York: Rizzoli, 1989); and George A. Dudley , A Workshop for Peace: Designing the United Nations Headquarters (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1994. On Lever House, see Carol H. Krinsky , Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 18-25; and Nicholas Adams , Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: The Experiment from 1936 (Milan, Italy: Electa, 2006), 64-75. On Stuyvesant Town, see Engineering News-Record 140 (1948 , February 5): 74-98; and Arthur R. Simon , Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A.: Pattern for Two Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1970). On Wright's tall buildings, see Jonathan Lipman , Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings (New York : Rizzoli, 1986); Donald Hoffmann , Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and the Skyscraper ( Mineola, NY: Dover, 1998); and Anthony Alofsin, ed., Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower (Bartlesville, OK: Price Tower Arts Center; New York: Rizzoli, 2005). See also "Chicago's Prudential Building," Architectural Forum 97 (1952, August): 90-99.

Robert Fogelson , Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); and Robert Bruegmann , Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Other recent studies of downtown include such well-known works as Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn , Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Larry Ford , Cities and Buildings: Skyscrapers, Skid Rows and Suburbs ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Larry Ford , America's New Downtowns: Revitalization or Reinvention? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); and Alison Isenberg , Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). On sprawl and its alternatives, see Dwight Young , ed., Alternatives to Sprawl ( Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1995); Andres Duany , Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk , and Jeff Speck , Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream ( New York: North Point Press, 2000 ); Alex Marshall , How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); Adam Rome , The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton , Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001); Doug Kelbaugh , Repairing the American Metropolis: Common Place Revisited (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); Myron Orfield , American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002); Gregory D. Squires , ed., Urban Sprawl: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses ( Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2002); Dolores Hayden , Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003); Howard Frumkin , Lawrence Frank , and Richard Jackson , Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004); Ann Forsyth , Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and the Woodlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Elizabeth A. Johnson and Michael W. Klemens , eds., Nature in Fragments: The Legacy of Sprawl (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Anthony Flint , This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Dolores Hayden , Field Guide to Sprawl ( New York: Norton, 2006); Richard Ingersoll , Sprawltown: Looking for the City on Its Edges (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 2006); and David C. Soule , ed., Urban Sprawl: A Comprehensive Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006).

John Tauranac , The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark (New York: Scribner, 1995); and Carol Willis, ed., Building the Empire State (New York: Norton, 1998). These studies, in turn, follow the foundational reference work on the period, Robert A. M. Stern , Gregory Gilmartin , and Thomas Mellins , New York, 1930: Architecture and Urbanism between the World Wars ( New York: Rizzoli, 1997). Before Kingwell, perhaps the most notable recent contribution to studies of this building in its period was Neil Bascomb, Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City (New York: Broadway, 2003). See also William F. Lamb , "The Empire State Building: VII. The General Design," Architectural Forum 54, no. 1 ( 1931, January): 1-8; Vernon H. Bailey , Empire State: A Pictorial Record of Its Construction (New York: Rudge, 1931); Theodore James Jr. , The Empire State Building ( New York: Harper & Row, 1975 ); Jonathan Goldman , The Empire State Building Book (New York: St. Martin's, 1980); Lewis W. Hine , Lewis Hine , The Empire State Building ( Munich, Germany: Prestel, 1998); and Geraldine B. Wagner , Thirteen Months to Go: The Creation of the Empire State Building (New York: Quintet , 2003).

Alan Trachtenberg , The Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965); and Roland Barthes , The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979).

Karsten Harries , The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997); and his Infinity and Perspective (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

Daniel Okrent , Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (New York: Penguin, 2004).

Marvin Trachtenberg , The Statue of Liberty (New York: Viking, 1976); and Katherine Solomonson , The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition: Skyscraper Design and Cultural Change in the 1920s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Meredith Clausen , The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).