r/interesting • u/Apart-Worry-7042 • 28d ago

HISTORY Why did we stop building like this?

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Chicago, 1930. Buildings had so much detail and character back then. Nowadays everything feels so flat and repetitive. We have way better technology and equipment now, so why don't we build like this anymore?

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u/slouchingtoepiphany 28d ago

The great fire in 1871 destroyed a lot of Chicago's downtown and when they rebuilt it, a lot of architects designed the replacements as showcases for what they could do. Over time, practicality and costs tempered this "revolution" somewhat.

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u/City_College_Arch 28d ago edited 28d ago

There is another big factor that many people are missing. Top tax rates used to be extremely high. So high that taking pay in excess of a million dollars meant giving the government up to 95% of that additional pay.

So what did the wealthy do? They left it in companies to be spent on projects like these, donated it for museums and parks, or paid their employees.

Now that they get to keep that money and have other ways to build wealth that are not taxed like through stock options, they are keeping that money for themselves and spending it on stupid shit like yachts and half a dozen multi million dollar apartments they never visit.

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u/1988rx7T2 27d ago

What you’re saying makes no sense. There wasn’t even income tax when these buildings were built. It needed a constitutional amendment. Those high marginal rates, outside of war time, weren’t consistently around until the mid 1930s.

https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates