Philly's got some tall buildings. Not as many as many other cities, but there was a gentleman's agreement [or was there!?] to not build anything taller than Billy Penn. But Philly's catching up with the other big building cities around the world quickly. But the bulidings along Broad St just south of City Hall tower above, but in a friendly manner. They're manageable. The Atlantic Building, the Wachovia tower, all nice sized. Nice to look up at on a blue-sky day too.
Man's right angles cutting into nature's shape-shifting cotton balls.
At least according to him, Edmund Bacon guilted developers into honoring the "gentleman's agreement." No word on whether or not it actually existed.
Posted by: Terrence Ryan | February 26, 2006 at 01:46 AM
it was Billy Penn's feet. if you look at a diagram of the tallest buildings in the city, most of them are to the right of City Hall (and just a gridline shorter), and then Liberty Place broke the barrier in 1987 and 1990, and since then 8 other projects have shot for the skies...
(shoot, I have this cool schematic printout, with all the cartoon building in a row by height, but can't recall the URL -- oh yeah, it's from http://www.skyscraperpage.com/, but they're down right now)
Posted by: acm | February 27, 2006 at 03:06 PM