Life was looking up in Lincoln 90 years ago.
The soaring '20s gave birth to the bulk of our city's profile, with so many new buildings heightening our horizon that the Chamber of Commerce made it a slogan: “A new skyline every morning.â€
The era ushered in the 10-story Security Mutual Building, the 11-story Capital Hotel, the old First National Bank Building, the Sharp Building, the Terminal Building and more -- all of them measuring more than 100 feet high.
And climbing above them all during that time, the 400-foot Capitol, which, when finished, would ultimately dictate what Lincoln looks like from a distance.
Then there was a lull in high-rise construction, and the skyline remained relatively unchanged through the Depression, and World War II, and into the late 1960s.
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Architects began climbing higher again for a few years, drawing up the city's second-tallest structure -- what is now the U.S. Bank building -- and what would become the Wells Fargo Center and the Downtown Holiday Inn in the early 1970s.
But then another pause, and the skyline stayed stable for years.
Now look. The Chamber's old slogan could almost apply again.
You see the Larson Building and the towering East Stadium expansion. The Pinnacle Bank Arena and all of its accompanying buildings in the West Haymarket. Latitude, Aspen Heights and 8N student apartments.
This is a strikingly different view of Lincoln than it was just a few years ago.
None of these buildings touch the clouds like the Capitol can, but they add texture to the city's silhouette.
They reinforce what our skyline says about this Midwestern city: Here is a center of state government, a place for higher education.
“I think it's a great community, in terms of the architecture of our skyline,†said Wayne Drummond, emeritus dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Architecture. “It feels right for who we are, out here on the beginnings of the Great Plains.â€
Race toward the sky
It didn't take much to stand tall in a young city with two- or three-story buildings. So in the late 1880s, the Burr brothers -- mayor Carlos and attorney Lionel -- built the 75-foot, six-story Burr Block at 12th and O, the first building with an elevator.
Future statesman William Jennings Bryan would practice law here and, when he was starting out, eat and sleep here, too. Charles Dawes also had his law office here, decades before he became vice president under Calvin Coolidge.
It held its reign as the tallest commercial building for 20 years, until the First National Bank building at the southeast corner of 10th and O climbed to 110 feet. The Burr Block had new owners by then, Security Mutual, and it would add four more floors, for a total height of 135 feet.
And then it was on. The Miller and Paine tower hit 118 feet. The Terminal Building on the southwest corner of 10th and O was built to 130 feet. The Capital Hotel -- now the Georgian Place, and the downtown YMCA -- reached 136 feet in 1926.
That same year, the Sharp Building at 13th and N, grew to 150 feet.
“And it was clearly the tallest commercial building for decades,†said Ed Zimmer, the historic preservation planner for the City-County Planning Department.
All of these were within a few blocks of each other, and they would form the foundation of our urban skyline, clearly visible and canyon-like down O Street from 27th Street.
But there, a little to the left, the building that always has been, and always will be, the tallest in Lincoln.
Capitol dominance
No, there's isn't any language in the law saying nothing can be built taller than the state Capitol.
“Heights are regulated by zoning,†Zimmer said, “and zoning is in cool numbers, and not in design statements.â€
But the effect is the same. The city set downtown Lincoln's height restriction at 285 feet -- about 115 feet lower than the Sower's toes.
And no building even comes close to that. The U.S. Bank building, built in 1969, reaches about 220 feet, still nearly 200 feet shorter than the Capitol.
Only once has a developer proposed a project that hit the height limit -- a high-rise at the spot of the Larson Building on Q Street -- and that didn't advance, Zimmer said.
“A building even at 285 feet in Lincoln would seem very tall,†he said.
Zoning height restrictions are only part of the Capitol's protection. In 1977, the Legislature created the Capitol Environs District, which limited building heights in the areas immediately surrounding the statehouse and in corridors extending out in the four cardinal directions.
Structures in those areas can't generally rise higher than the base of the Capitol, roughly 57 feet, to guarantee clean views of the tower.
In 1988, the state created the Capitol Environs Commission to enforce strict design standards for private and public projects in the same area.
There's more. There's a reason you can see the Capitol so clearly from Pioneers Park, or from the interstate, or from the Holmes Golf Course: The state has mapped out a dozen Capitol View Corridors, which radiate into the countryside around Lincoln.
“That's about protecting the views of the Capitol, because of the dominance of the Capitol to the cityscape,†Zimmer said. “We look at impacts on the corridors. If there's no impact, no problem. Or if it's going to pop up in the middle of a great view, we say: 'Move that.'â€
Growing out, not up
The recent construction downtown hasn't made the skyline taller, but it's stretched it out. It's also made it a more vibrant foreground.
“All of the housing that's been added, all of that, and the Capitol's still the dominant view,†said Drummond, the architect. “It reminds me of the Washington, D.C., skyline. Everything's pretty well held to where you have views of the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol.â€
And it's unlikely anything in Lincoln will ever compete with the Capitol, like Omaha's 45-story First National Bank Tower.
First, the city's zoning laws would prohibit it, and it's also not that practical. It's still economical to buy enough land to spread out, not up.
“A lot of businesses have become suburbanized,†said Tom Laging, an emeritus faculty member of the College of Architecture. “Lincoln Benefit Life and State Farm, those are probably businesses that would have been high downtown buildings.â€
Instead, both insurance companies sprawled out along 84th Street.
And Assurity Life was able to stay close to downtown while building a 175,000-square-foot headquarters that doesn't scrape the sky.
Laging has thought about -- and written about -- Lincoln's skyline. The best views are from Sun Valley Boulevard, looking east. But there are strong views from 27th and O, and from 27th Street to the north, and from 14th Street in Belmont. It helps that Lincoln is in a valley.
But there's another view, one that reinforces Lincoln's identity as a university town, too.
Stand on 11th Street and look north, he said, between the downtown buildings. At the top of the vista, you'll see Memorial Stadium's jumbo screen.