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Look man, the truth is because Charleston is a medium sized city, not big by any standard, and the people here don't want much growth let alone tall buildings, it is really the mindset here. A businessman just purchased a large building in the center of downtown and tried to make it more modern and taller, and they denied his permit. It is just the mindset here, that is the reason. It is behind the times here, and they really don't want any growth (and I really dislike this about Charleston)
Having height restrictions is not the same as being "behind the times." I think it's wise to have height restrictions in most of the peninsula to preserve the essence of historic Charleston. Peninsular Charleston is the most urban place in the Carolinas, and that's without shiny new highrises.
Spoke with someone in land development. Yes the restriction is no taller than any of the church steeples &.....the reality........the cost to build up is very, very, very expensive.....not worth it.
I think Charleston's skyline is unique. If it had a cluster of highrises, it would look like everywhere else. Besides, I've been to so many cities big and small in this country with glass and steel skylines, and only a few of them have the vitality of downtown Charleston. It takes a combination of residential and commercial activity on the ground to make a downtown vital, and Charleston has what I would call a "living downtown." I do agree, however, that North Charleston will eventually have a highrise district, perhaps around the Airport/Coliseum/Tanger area.
You don't have to pretend! You are in the past when you come here man!
Are you saying that Charleston is regressive? I've often heard the term "progress" mentioned when a new highrise is constructed. Can't there be progress without highrise development?
I work in downtown Chicago, and multi-story buildings have been a part of the Chicago skyline since the 19th century. It's great seeing the skyline as I ride in on the train each morning, sometimes rising into the clouds or fog, sometimes lit by sunlight. Same with New York's great skyline. I remember first traveling to Chicago and New York in the mid-1950s and being blown away by the buildings, the hustle and bustle of the places. That's part of their genii, their spirits in the ancient Roman sense. Washington DC, which I also visited as a boy, has a very different and flatter feel (a European friend once commented that it was a city that was built to look good one day as ruins): when I first saw it in 1953, it was at night, and as we walked out of the train station, I saw the Capitol lit up and streetcars throwing sparks as they passed on the streets in front of me. It was a moment of pure wonder ... like the opening of Barry Levenson's "Avalon" where the immigrant walks into the streets of New York with fireworks going off over his head.
Dumping the Sears/Willis tower in downtown Washington DC would change its spirit, its genius. It would be a slap in the faces of all those who have loved and planned the place, going all the way back to the Founders. I've seen this sort of change in many cities I've lived in over the last 60 years: the Corps of Engineers channelized the Mississippi in the town I grew up in and you could no longer go down and fish on the levee, because there was no levee any more; in Iowa City where I went to undergrad school, the sleepy little prairie university town I knew in the early 70s now has multi-story hotels and parking garages downtown. It's lost part of its genius, its soul.
The spirits of these people have been destroyed, or rather replaced with other spirits and I no longer recognize them. They have new spirits, and I don't know what they are. When I visit these places, the ghosts of what they once were are overlaid on alien landscapes as I look around me: I find I'm homesick for what can never be again. It's not just aesthetics, it's the loss of my memories, the memories of the witnesses I've known and who I've not known who are no longer with us.
History is your lives, and the lives of your ancestors; it's not just rubble and old books. You who live in a place own its history, whether your families have lived there for generations or are newcomers (and whether you like it or not). Be careful when you wish for progress and big buildings in Charleston and say that history doesn't matter; you may wake up one day and find that (as Gertrude Stein wrote of Oakland CA) there's no longer any there there.
Vasily, very well put. I have no roots in Charleston but I can appreciate the historical feel of it.
I'm from a Port town and it is so sad to see the wharf area being built up with condos and other buildings.
I hadn't realized the building code had to do with the steeples. A few weekends ago, we went to the top of a parking garage and we were all quick to point out the steeples. We "got" it without even being aware of the intention.
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