A city’s ambitions, measured in skyscrapers

For 46 years, Africa’s tallest building, the Carlton Centre, cut a blocky silhouette in the skyline of downtown Johannesburg. 

The 50-story concrete tower stood like an anchor as the city around it churned. On the streets below, apartheid rose and fell. The European immigrants who once set up shop across the city center, selling tiny Italian coffees and handmade leather shoes, were replaced by immigrants from across Africa, selling tiny Ethiopian coffees and boldly printed African dress shirts. The city center emptied and filled, crumbled and gentrified. 

And through it all, like a hangover from another era, the Carlton stood