# Why is there a building height limit in Washington DC? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 13, 2013, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771 "2013-09-13T15:35:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771/61 "2013-09-19T22:10:06Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > Couple of questions: > –Were height restrictions ever considered for America’s “skyscraper cities” like Chicago or NYC? See post #58 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771/62 "2013-09-19T22:58:31Z")
Even New York discussed the possibility of height limits and [imposed them](http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/zone/zonehis.shtml) on some residential buildings. > [@](#): > > As early as the 1870’s and 1880’s, New Yorkers began to protest the loss of light and air as taller residential buildings began to appear in Manhattan. In response, the state legislature enacted a series of height restrictions on residential buildings, culminating in the Tenement House Act of 1901. Creating corporate offices or a headquarters is a complex negotiation of square footage, visibility, accessibility, location, and cost. There can be no one right answer. It’s also not necessarily a [rational process](http://hardygreen.com/how-corporate-america-conquered-the-suburbs/). > [@](#): > > Who can stand the city? It’s all noise, dirt, and hassles. In 1942, the Bell Labs division of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. declared it had had enough and was relocating to the suburbs. Over a few decades, this path-breaking move would set off a corporate stampede. … > > The rationale would be much repeated in years to come, as one corporation after another—including notably, General Foods, General Motors, Connecticut General Life Insurance, Deere & Co., and General Electric–removed to similar pastoral locations. > > But by 1988, long after the quiet corporate exodus had become a mad dash, a reconsideration of the companies’ logic was overdue. William H. Whyte–a former editor at Fortune who’d become well-known first for his book probing corporate mores, The Organization Man, and later for his investigations of urban life–considered the business-relocation trend in his book City: Rediscovering the Center. Corporate campuses, he declared, were employee-unfriendly and pharaonic manifestations of the sprawl-inducing “car culture.” Many were fortress-like, as if intended to discourage visitors, and all were inhospitable to the “unplanned, informal encounters” upon which spontaneous creativity depended. Most significantly, he charged that the relocations were not motivated by workforce wishes: Rather, the true reason for the removal of corporate headquarters to such campuses was their proximity to CEOs’ homes, which in every case proved to be no more than 20 minutes away. There was a cost to this: he found that these corporations did much worse than average after the move. Lots has changed since then, and many corporations have moved back into downtowns. Many don’t, of course - look at Silicon Valley and their corporate campuses. But both paths are now chosen for more sensible reasons than the CEO’s Connecticut address. William H. Whyte is probably my favorite author on urban issues. He was always way ahead of everybody else in insights. And the small niceties everybody across the globe uses today to make cities livable came from his film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, which used the shocking technique of watching real people in real spaces to see what they _wanted_ to do, not what planners thought was good for them. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2013, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771/63 "2013-09-21T21:04:47Z")
I thought it was a weight thing, that some people would consider it bad if DC sank back into the marshes whence it came. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771/64 "2013-09-22T04:08:16Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > Couple of questions: > –Were height restrictions ever considered for America’s “skyscraper cities” like Chicago or NYC? Indeed, Chicago had a height limit during the decades when the skyscraper was being developed there (and elsewhere): [ul] [li]1893 130 feet (though some permites for much higher buildings had already been issued[/li][li]1902 260 feet[/li][li]1915 200 feet[/li][li]1920 260 feet[/li][li]1923 264 feet, but tower portions allowed up to 600 feet[/li][li]1942 bulk restrictions replace height limits[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![runningdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@runningdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runningdude)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2013, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771/65 "2013-09-22T18:41:12Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > I thought it was a weight thing, that some people would consider it bad if DC sank back into the marshes whence it came. I, for one, rather find this an ideal to solution to our current political troubles… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-building-height-limit-in-washington-dc/668771.md?page=3)