U/C in Texas (by height)

[I45Tex]

7xx - 47st off. - Main/Walker/Fannin/Rusk, Houston downtown
650 - 43st mix. - Victory Tower, Dallas uptown
563 - 44st res. - 360 Condominiums, Austin downtown
560 - 42st res. - Museum Tower, Dallas downtown
xxx - 850Ksf off. - Discovery Tower, Houston downtown
547 - 38st hot. - Omni Convention Center Hotel, Fort Worth downtown
5xx - 34st off. - Memorial Hermann Hospital HQ, Houston memorial city
501 - 37st res. - One Park Place, Houston downtown
485 - 42st res. - Turnberry Tower, Houston uptown
470 - 30st res. - Ocean Towers SPI, South Padre Island
424 - 34st mix. - Grand Hyatt, San Antonio downtown
416 - 37st res. - Altavida, Austin
405 - 30st res. - 2727 Kirby, Houston river oaks
386 - 30st res. - Endeavour Clear Lake, Pasadena
382 - 27st res. - Palisade Palms Beach Club, Galveston
382 - 27st res. - Palisade Palms Trade Winds, Galveston
375 - 31st res. - Azure, Dallas uptown
358 - 29st res. - Mosaic Tower I, Houston museum district
358 - 29st res. - Mosaic Tower II, Houston museum district
350 - 27st off. - Saint Ann Court, Dallas uptown
339 - 31st res. - Legacy @ Town Lake, Austin downtown
336 - 28st res. - The House, Dallas uptown
331 - 24st mix. - One Arts Plaza, Dallas downtown
324 - 21st off. - T. Boone Pickens Academic Tower, Houston med center
323 - 29st res. - The Monarch, Austin downtown
320 - stadium - Texas Stadium, Arlington
315 - 23st res. - Cosmopolitan, Houston uptown
310 - 26st off. - 1900 McKinney. Dallas uptown
310 - 23st res. - Ritz-Carlton Residences II, Dallas uptown
308 - 28st res. - Cirque, Dallas uptown
3xx - 25st hosp - Methodist Outpatient Care Center, Houston med center

[I45Tex]

I have left off proposed projects I cannot be sure of (or am still hoping will not happen).

Included are Austin projects like TWELVE Domain, 501 Congress (hoping will not happen), The Austonian (hoping will not happen), and many more, and Houston projects like the Wulfe Cos.' redevelopment on Post Oak and the downtown Houston City Centre and 1500 Smith St.

[sogod]

I think you also missed the Alta Rosewood Office and Condo towers, 2000 McKinney, and uhhh... One Victory Park I think is the name (20st Office building in Victory) in Uptown Dallas. Also, isnt there a 19st building at Park Lane Place going up now?

[I45Tex]

The list expands somewhat below 300', but to be more to the point, I was getting tired of listing by the time I got there. In terms of interest, however, an interesting point is that not until the 1970s did it matter on the skylines of Dallas and Houston that energy industry companies favor high-rise structures to a greater degree than electronics industry companies do. Since then, I think that if Houston had been the electronics center and Dallas the energy center, the rate of high-rise construction in the two would have been inverted.

[sogod]

You might be right about that. Tech companies rarely build highrises. Just look at Silicon Valley. Its all campuses.

[JDawgboyATX]

Um why do you hope the Austin projects will not happen? That dosn't make any sence to me and by the way they broke gound on the Austonian so guess youll have to put that up at 56 stories and 683 feet. :tmonkey:

[I45Tex]

Austin's skyline of the capitol and the Tower appropriately showed off the two principal focuses of honor about the capital of the state. I think that that makes sense. High-rise office slowly built up along Congress, with Congress at Fourth finally supplying a timely symbol of the rise of advanced commerce. But high-rise residential is different than office, especially when it comes to the public realm of the state capital. Where the latter (office) is part of Texas' enterprise, it's odious to let the rich get to lord it over the capitol dome. First, aesthetically - the exclamation point of the skyline is seriously going to be a building that summons up electric shavers and underarm deodorant sticks? Second, domes have always been built to evoke the entirety of something, to evoke encompassing the whole, and for the visual sweepstakes to now go to a condo complex for high-rollers who want a glamorous pad, grossly outsizing the capitol dome, not only takes away from any such unitary feeling to a far greater extent than the shorter buildings have (although they sure have), it also paints the picture that, if you have the means, you are, not to say 'above the law', but, that you get to give yourself glory even at the expense of discouragingly treating the pride of place that is held in common by all Texans and vested in the things that stand for us. Somebody is getting to buy themselves a piece of flair that, from the outside, shows everyone arriving in Austin that the honorability of the undertaking of preserving a worthwhile society for the lives of everyone with roots here (the noble function of a capitol) is no longer as honorable and worthy of special prominence as making a wad of cash... This being Austin, even getting that reward - of private success where you can buy a condo showing everyone the image of you looking down on the capitol - through lobbying for special interests, through personally saying it's all part of the game to keep playing fast and loose with the state's public purpose. After all, you can't be in it for everybody, really: there will be trade-offs and people who benefit more than they contribute, so you might as well be on the winning side, in it for yourself and for those who'll pay you for the privilege, right? And they label it the Austonian. That too should rankle. People are supposed to identify with it *why*? Because it's tall?

[rogramjet]

Um why do you hope the Austin projects will not happen? That dosn't make any sence to me and by the way they broke gound on the Austonian so guess youll have to put that up at 56 stories and 683 feet. :tmonkey:

I just moved to Austin and think it's great; but really don't get the appeal of all those high rise condos. They're so not Austin - the nature lovin', fitness obsessed, weird, gardenin' Austin that we all know and love.

Also, high rise living is really a unique lifestyle that can quickly become very inconvenient and claustrophobic if you don't have walkable access to amenities like dry cleaners, grocers, drug stores etc. - and really walkable, not the Texas "oh, you can walk - the store's about 15 blocks that-a-way." I predict the novelty will wear off soon for most Texans...

I'm all for urban infill and Austin is doing a great job in that area. But I think super high rises are a bad fit for this city. I also agree with IH45 - they take away from the dignity of the capitol building. Washington DC has no high rises taller than the capitol.

And who says a great city needs a bunch of tall buildings. That's an American obsession that equates to a city's metaphorical *#$% size. Really, in America only New York has a worthy skyline and the geography that made it necessary.

Many, many great cities in world have few if any tall skyscrapers - Stockholm, Rome, Cairo - even Paris locates its collection outside the core of the city.

I always thought Austin was cool and self confident enough not to need those extra inches - oh, uh, I mean feet...

[kenc]

That's an American obsession that equates to a city's metaphorical *#$% size.

I think we are allowed to say "penis" on this website.

[mikedsjr]

Tall structures have always been an obsession with man. It feeds his ego.

[JDawgboyATX]

Look, I can understand why there are people who may not like it but Austin is much more than the state capital. It is a vibrant urban city that is growing rapidly and its nice to see that the city government is trying to keep downtown the center of the city. I love Austin I was born and raised here but I am one of the ones who welcomes change and I am glad to see such highrises go up. Austin is a city of nature and thats another reason why Im glad there is development like this in the center of the city rather than destroying more open land and enviromentally sensitive areas. As far as dry cleaners and such we have them downtown. It wont be long before we have another grocerystore in downtown as well as a Circut City and other stores. I don't know... maybe its because as somebody who has lived here and loved this city, but at the same time been envious of Houston and Dallas for having such tall highrises, I always dreamed of seeing Austin with a skyline that would have tall highrises and now we are getting them. Austin is no longer a small city and it is time that we grew up not only in our citizens perception of our city, but also our city's skyline.

[I45Tex]

It's worth mentioning that if you want extensible density it is better to have a fabric of more flexible four-to-eight-or-ten-storey blocks. The most lively, 'grown up' neighborhoods we will find anywhere are on that pattern. Building four or five or six or seven hundred feet up from the street just as often creates a vertical sterile cul-de-sac as it adds any significant life to the sidewalks. More to the point, the tall towers' bases are so deliberately programmed to supply the space above that there is less room for them (than for shorter, more reusable structural frames) to accommodate new patterns of neighborhood life if new patterns become desirable. The Texan way of life is getting trivialized as 'since everything's bigger here, and we are proud of it here... bigger is better!' It is time to change our cherished attitudes and teach ourselves that in order for something to be better, it has to be good, not just a sign of some form of progress (bigness being one).

[rantanamo]

Austin is sprawling like heck like the rest of th nation