It forbades any building over a certain height to occupy the same amount of area at the top of the structure as the base. Thus all the sky-scrapers have to taper as they attained ever increasing heights. This law prevents New york’s street from plunging into darkness.
Thus this distinctive Art deco Scraper received its characteristic stepped back pattern through a combination of the mayan influences seen in Paris and the modified height ordinance of the New york city.
With major efforts to incorporate this style into new skyscrapers this started to be referred to as the skyscraper style.
