page_title: Downtown
section_title: Skyscrapers
hierarchical_section_title: Downtown / History / Skyscrapers
caption_attribution_description: Chicago skyline
context_page_description: Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English-speakers to refer to a city's commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart, and is often synonymous with its central business district. It is marked by a cluster of tall buildings, cultural institutions and the convergence of rail transit and bus lines. In British English, the term "city centre" is most often used instead.
context_section_description: The skyscraper would become the hallmark of the downtown area. Prior to the invention of the elevator – and later the high-speed elevator – buildings were limited in height to about six stories, which was a de facto limit set by the amount of stairs it was assumed that people would climb, but with the elevator, that limit was shattered, and buildings began to be constructed up to about sixteen stories. What limited them then was the thickness of the masonry needed at the base to hold the weight of the building above it. As the buildings got taller, the thickness of the masonry and the space needed for elevators did not allow for sufficient rentable space to make the building profitable. What shattered that restriction was the invention of first the iron- and then the steel frame building, in which the building's load was carried by an internal metal frame skeleton, which the masonry – and later glass – simply hung off of without carrying any weight.
  Although first used in Chicago, the steel-framed skyscraper caught on most quickly in New York City in the 1880s, and from there spread to most other American cities in the 1890s and 1900s. The apparent lack of a height limitation of this type of building set off a fervent debate over whether their height should be restricted by law, with proponents and opponents of height limits bringing out numerous arguments in favor of their position. The question of height limits also had a profound implication for the nature of downtown itself: would it continue to be a concentrated core, or as it grew, would height limits force it to spread out into a larger area. In the short run, the proponents of height limits were successful in their efforts. By the 1910s, most of the largest and medium-sized cities had height limits in effect, with New York – despite several concerted efforts to enact them, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis being notable holdouts.
caption: Downtown Chicago, (the Loop) the third-most populous downtown in the U.S.
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