The city of Austin, the state capital of Texas, is the 10th most populous city in the United States as of July 2023[update] and the central hub of the Greater Austin metropolitan statistical area.[1][2] According to data from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), there are 33 buildings in Austin with heights of at least 100 m (330 ft). CTBUH also ranks Austin 19th nationally and 3rd statewide based on the number of completed buildings with heights of at least 490 ft (150 m). The aggregated heights of Austin's high-rises is second in Texas, behind Houston, based on data from Texas Real Estate Source.[3][4] The current tallest completed building in Austin is The Independent, with a height of 694 ft (212 m), followed by The Austonian at 683 ft (208 m) and Fairmont Austin at 591 ft (180 m).[a] The Independent has been the tallest completed building in Austin and the tallest in Texas outside of Dallas and Houston since its completion in 2019,[6] though its height was surpassed by the 875 ft (267 m) tall Sixth and Guadalupe currently under construction.
Bearing a height of 311 ft (95 m),[7] The Texas State Capitol remained the tallest structure in Austin long after its construction in the 1880s, with the city's central Congress Avenue otherwise lined with single-story buildings through the start of the 1900s.[8] The eight-story Scarbrough Building and the nine-story Littlefield Building, built between 1910 and 1912, were Austin's first high-rise buildings; the Littlefield Building was the tallest commercial building in the U.S. west of New Orleans and east of San Francisco upon its completion.[9] In 1928, the Austin City Council briefly considered setting a 100 ft (30 m) height limit for future construction in the city but backed away from the proposal.[10]
After the mid-20th century, Downtown Austin began to transition from being predomniantly composed of low-rise buildings to a skyline with high-rises.[11] Beginning with the 26-story Westgate Tower, the addition of new skyscrapers to Downtown Austin between 1967 and 1980 led to an increasing realization that views of the state capitol from certain vantage points could become obscured.[8] The capitol was also no longer the city's tallest building,[12] surpassed in height by the Dobie Center and the Chase Bank Tower.[b] In response, the Texas State Legislature and the City of Austin created 35 Texas Capitol View Corridors that would preserve selected views of the capitol.[8] By the mid-1980s, Austin featured over a dozen skyscrapers,[12] with at least 12 buildings built during the decade featuring at least 15 floors.[18] Described by the Austin American-Statesman as "the first downtown high-rise wave", the uptick in skyscraper construction that began in the 1980s was mostly characterized by granite and limestone office buildings.[19] More rapid construction of new high-rises in downtown Austin began by the 1990s and continued thereafter,[8] contrasting a concurrent slowdown in the construction of new skyscrapers in Dallas and Houston.[12] Mark Lamster, an architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News, attributed the emergence of increasingly taller skyscrapers to the small size and high density of Austin, incentivizing vertical growth due to the resultingly high cost of land.[12] The Statesman identified a second wave of new skyscrapers in Austin that began in the early 2000s, including construction of the Frost Bank Tower. By 2010, the construction of new residential buildings and office space for technology companies accounted for most of the city's new skyscrapres.[12] By 2023, the combined height of Austin's high-rises overtook Dallas according to Texas Real Estate Source.[4][3]
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