Re: Millennium Tower - Filene's
For me, the problem with Philly's skyline is that all the tallest buildings are packed into the same spot. It looks awesome driving in, but creates 2 problems from up-close. First, the 5 tallest buildings (ranging from , off the top of my head, approximately 738'-975') are surrounded by a sea of buildings between 400'-500'. Thus, it is very difficult to get angles where you can see the true heights of these buildings. People often say Liberty Place (945') looks stumpy, but most angles you don't even see the first 500' of the building! On the flip side, all the towers around 475'-500' look really short because they are dominated by the bigs.
The quickest way to make a tall building appear shorter is to put a taller building next to it. Look at the Jin Mao in Shanghai for a perfect example. This is why many of us want to protect the Hancock from being overshadowed by a taller building across the street. Boston isn't built like Philly, and we should do our best to keep the spacing between the tallest towers (ie any new challengers to the throne should be thrown into the financial district, and shouldn't be so far above the other towers to minimize a cluster with 13 buildings over 500'). A Comcast like building next to the Hancock would wreck our skyline irreparably.