Tampa Skyline

Rivergate Tower is a 31-storey cylinder on the bank of the Hillsborough River, and nobody in Tampa calls it anything but the Beer Can Building. Round towers are rare in American skylines, and a round tower on a waterfront is rarer still — it is the element that makes a Tampa silhouette instantly separable from any other Florida city.

Beside it, 100 North Tampa rises 579 feet as the tallest building on Florida's west coast, finishing in a stepped crown. The pairing of a cylinder and a stepped tower is the core of the composition.

Water Street has added more towers to downtown Tampa in the last few years than the previous two decades produced, and the eastern edge of the skyline is visibly newer than the rest. Unlike Cleveland or Kansas City, whose silhouettes were fixed generations ago, Tampa's is actively changing.

We re-cut the Tampa model as the skyline changes rather than shipping a view that stopped being accurate in 2015. The river is part of the composition too — the city reads from the water, and the towers are arranged along a bend rather than in a block.

100 North Tampa leads at 579 feet, the tallest building on Florida's west coast, finishing in a stepped crown. Bank of America Plaza stands beside it, and the Sykes building and Park Tower fill the middle of the cluster.

Rivergate Tower is the short cylinder on the riverbank that nobody calls anything but the Beer Can Building. Amalie Arena sits low to the south, and the newer Water Street towers mark the eastern edge — the part of the skyline that did not exist a decade ago and is still changing.