Franz was not a fan of spectacles, but he had built a few nonetheless, including Vienna's twelve-story United Power Department Store.
To be honest, this high-rise had completely shattered the limits of European imagination at the time. They had never imagined that a building could stand so tall.
It was not as though Europe lacked tall structures, but those were mostly church spires, and whether they even counted as buildings in the modern sense was open to question.
Not to mention that, in terms of scale, they were utterly incomparable to the spectacles Franz had built.
Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, humanity's confidence was swelling as never before. Every country had experimented with tall buildings, yet whether in Britain, France, or the Ottoman Empire, the tallest structures still had not exceeded eight stories.
The Americans, however, had built the first skyscraper in Philadelphia—the ten-story Jayne Building.
But that was practically the limit of architecture at the time. Many believed that only the legendary Tower of Babel could surpass ten stories.
Yet the Austrians swiftly built their own Tower of Babel. In truth, if Franz had not stopped them, the Austrian Empire's engineers had been planning to build even higher.
Brick, stone, and cast-iron structures still dominated at the time, but the Austrian Empire had long since entered the age of reinforced concrete.
Extensive practical experience had already proven this structure stable and reliable, and over the years, the Austrian Empire's engineers had accumulated a considerable wealth of experience.
Thus, everything fell into place as naturally as water flowing into a channel. Even Austria's commoners found nothing strange about it, since in their minds, buildings seemed to be growing taller and taller.
But visitors from other countries had undergone no such gradual transition. Suddenly seeing a building so towering was bound