RBC Bank’s $100 million headquarters building in Downtown Raleigh was completed last year, and while there seems to be no public consensus regarding the building’s likeness, it is the tallest and most dominant building in the Triangle. This article—the first segment of a three-part in-depth look at this local cultural icon—aims to provide a framework for future discussion of skyline development in North Carolina’s capital city.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TALLEST BUILDINGS
Throughout the history of mankind, the tallest building in a given region was typically built in honor of a ruler or deity. In monarchical societies, the governing figure or landlord’s castle was built to the highest height. With increasing European construction technology in the Middle Ages, along with the predominance of Christianity, many churches and cathedrals were built, several of them the tallest structures in the world at the time of their completion. Such edifices would employ the most skilled labor available, master craftsmen who possessed the knowledge of both the age-old craft and the most up-to-date technology. Gothic architecture is a fantastic example. Highly ornate pointed arches, vaults and flying buttresses—forms the world had never seen—were invented and used to overemphasize height, expressing the magnificence of the divine (and the authority of the church). The advance of technology in the old world was akin to population growth at the time: slow, steady and generally unchanging over decades and centuries.
As the old world order of social control via religion dissipated in the rise of Western capitalism, the tallest buildings in the world, which had always been monuments and religious icons, gave way to corporate structures. Office buildings became mankind’s newest and greatest engineering achievements. The 19th Century saw the advent of the elevator and steel structural systems, allowing buildings to be feasibly built with more than just a handful of stories. As industrial companies grew, and their products spread to the dawning bourgeois, taller and taller office buildings began to spring up in urban areas to house growing white collar administrations—particularly in Chicago and New York, where conditions were ripe for bearing the first skyscrapers. The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 hastened the development of many skyscrapers, notably the Reliance Building with its steel framed structure. Manhattan’s inelastic boundaries and position as an international port city necessitated that developers expand skyward.
Singer Building, Met Life Tower, Woolworth Building, Chrystler Building, Empire State Building
Competition between the two cities mounted, and the skyscraper race in New York and Chicago of the late 1800’s accelerated in pre-WWI New York with the construction of the Singer Building, Woolworth Building, and MET Life Building, each consecutively superseding its predecessor for the title of tallest inhabitable structure in the world. Two decades later, the Chrystler Building and Empire State Building followed in the same fashion—the latter held the crown of tallest building in the world until the construction of the World Trade Center in the 1970’s. The Empire State Building was extremely ambitious and poorly timed; the structure—funded by the owners of DuPont and GM—suffered the Great Depression and stood mostly empty for years. It set an important precedent as a development venture, and as an icon that has for decades represented the power and prestige of the city and state of New York, as well as the US. Civic and national pride in each of these cities, a symptom, at its root, of American imperialist egoism, sparked the international competitive initiative to build the biggest city with the tallest building in the world. Even in smaller cities, big businesses stretched their money-monuments to reach new heights.
TALL BUILDINGS IN RALEIGH AND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE TALLEST
And so the conversation moves to the capital city of North Carolina, where few buildings more than fifteen stories were built before the 1980’s. Preceding RBC Bank’s new mixed-use headquarters building, completed in 2008, Two Hanover Square (the BB&T Building), which was completed in 1991, held the record of tallest building in Raleigh. That building and its slightly shorter sibling (the Wachovia Building or Wells Fargo Building?) were the result of the financial boom in the 1980’s and were pushed through before the Savings & Loan crisis and subsequent economic recession of the early nineties. Similarly, RBC Plaza rose out of ‘ideal’ market conditions in the mid-naughties and was completed just as our current market conditions publicly set in. (Note that all three banks in the discussion are practically North Carolina based.)
BB&T Building and 30 Rockefeller Plaza
The BB&T building was a handsome and well-founded addition to the Raleigh skyline, contrary to the gripes of some fake-stucco-loving critics around town. The project is a clear shout out to New York’s Rockefeller Center (now GE Building or 30 Rock), designed by a large team of New York architects led by Raymond Hood and finished in 1933. The design of 30 Rock was an extremely influential liberation of urban form. Its commission by Rockefeller may be comparable to Gehry’s commission in Bilbao in its affluent sponsorship, lengthy and highly debated process, and precedent-setting results. Certainly, BB&T has much stockier and less flattering proportions than Rockefeller’s slim, attractive profile, and the quotations of 30 Rock’s Art Deco details have been pleasantly abstracted. At the time BB&T and Wachovia were built, their manifestation signified a big step for Raleigh towards becoming a major city. Our metropolitan area has since moved from around 75th largest (1990) in the US and broken into the top 50. The buildings themselves were likely envisioned as part of marketing plans to increase influence in the capital city and strengthen customer bases in the central and eastern parts of the state. But building tall as a form of marketing is an old trick.
Every tall structure, from Roman Catholic Cathedrals to the Dubai Tower, evokes undeniable emotional and psychological responses in us humans. This stunning effect is inherent to the scale and sheer presence of such a large object. Often these evocations are intentional. We might recall the role of social control in the history of organized religion and ask: is there a correlation between control and marketing? Is news television the new cathedral? This at least seems to be the case in China (see CCTV’s uncanny new headquarters building designed by Rem Koolhaas, below). In short, tall buildings should inspire. With the use of technology or architectural style, mankind’s engineered structures have stirred the human psyche for thousands of years.
CCTV Building, Beijing, China by Rem Koolhaas/OMA. Under Construction. photo: Liloh
Whether a symbol of religion or capitalism, and whether or not we find them inspiring, the tallest buildings in history have one thing in common: they illustrate the wealth, power and influence of their patrons. To understand Raleigh’s new tallest building comprehensively—if economic cycles are any indication, it may be the tallest for some time—we must interpret the building-object based on its own history (as well as its broader contexual history), its purpose, contributions and shortcomings, its spirit and its architecture. With critical and comparative analysis we can attempt to root out its intention to discover the DNA behind Raleigh citizens’ love-hate relationship with their new skyline icon.
Your Comment