Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta)

Bank of America Plaza
Viewed from Emory University Hospital Midtown
Former names	NationsBank Building C & S Plaza
General information
Type	Commercial offices
Location	600 Peachtree Street NE Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Coordinates	33.7708°N 84.3861°W / 33.7708; -84.3861
Construction started	1991
Completed	1992
Cost	US$150 million
Height
Architectural	317 m (1,040 ft)
Roof	284.3 m (933 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	55
Floor area	1,253,500 sq ft (116,450 m2)
Lifts/elevators	24
Design and construction
Owner	BentleyForbes
Management	Cousins Properties
Architect	Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates
Structural engineer	CBM Engineers Inc. Newcomb & Boyd
Main contractor	Beers Construction
References

Bank of America Plaza is a skyscraper located in the SoNo district of Atlanta, Georgia. At 317 m (1,040 ft) the tower is the 60th-tallest building in the world. When it first opened, it was the 9th tallest building in the world, and 6th tallest building in the United States. It is also Georgia's tallest building, the tallest building in any U.S. state capital, and the tallest building in the United States outside of Chicago and New York City. It has 55 stories of office space and was completed in 1992, when it was called NationsBank Plaza. Originally intended to be the headquarters for Citizens & Southern National Bank (which merged with Sovran Bank during construction), it became NationsBank's property following its formation in the 1991 hostile takeover of C&S/Sovran by NCNB.

As of 2012, the largest tenant is the law firm of Troutman Sanders.

Architectural details

Designed in the Art Déco style and built in only 14 months, one of the fastest construction schedules for any 1,000 ft (300 m) building. The Plaza's imposing presence is heightened by the dark color of its exterior. It soars into the sky with vertical lines that reinforce its height while also creating an abundance of revenue-generating corner offices. Located over 3.7 acres (1.5 ha) on Peachtree Street, the tower faces its border streets at a 45-degree angle to maximize the views to the north and south (midtown and downtown).

There is a 90 ft (27 m) obelisk-like spire at the top of the building echoing the shape of the building as a whole. Most of the spire is covered in 23 karat (96 percent) gold leaf. The open-lattice steel pyramid underneath the obelisk glows yellow-orange at night due to lighting. Originally, the lattice was designed to be clad in glass, but the engineers failed to take the weight of the glass into account. At its most basic, this is a modern interpretation of the Art Deco theme seen in the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. The inhabited part of the building actually ends abruptly with a flat roof. On top of this is built a pyramid of girders, which are gilded and blaze at night, with the same type of yellow-orange high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting now used in most street lights. Its design has been characterized as similar to the Messeturm in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Some low-power TV stations have shared an antenna at the top of the building: WANN-LP 32, WANN-CD 29, and construction permits for WTBS-LP 26 and WTBS-LD 30. (These are two co-owned stations and their digital companions, all co-owned; the digital ones have moved or applied to move to the North Druid Hills site.) Also on the building was WDTA-LP 53, which moved about a half-mile (800m) south to the SunTrust Plaza, where it switched to digital TV in 2010. In addition, the tower also hosts several amateur radio repeaters.

Building sale

The building was developed by Cousins Properties and designed by the architectural firm Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates LLC. According to published reports in Commercial Property News and Commercial Mortgage Alert, the building was recently sold for $436 million – a record price at $348 per square foot ($3746 per square meter) – to BentleyForbes, a Los Angeles real estate investment firm headed by C. Frederick Wehba.

Urban design

The skyscraper, built at a 45-degree angle to the city's street grid, is set back off its eastern and western street boundaries, Peachtree Street and West Peachtree Street, by over 50 yards (45 m). This setback is filled, variously, by driveways, parking garage entrances, potted plants, granite staircases, and sloping lawns. Though the building directly abuts the sidewalk on North Avenue, its northern boundary, the only access to this street is through a parking garage entrance that has been frequently closed since 2001.

Some urban planners decry the building as a Corbusian "tower in a park", as it actively disengages itself from the urban environment surrounding it, entirely omitting sidewalk-facing retail space. Critics argue that the building encourages its tenants to access it primarily by car and to remain inside the complex during the day. However it is across the street from the MARTA-rail North Avenue station.

In recent years, developers have rumored that the land under the surrounding driveways and lawns may soon be ripe for redevelopment into low- and mid-rise mixed-use buildings with street-fronting uses as the area urbanizes and the value of land in Midtown Atlanta increases.As of fall 2007, present plans include reconfiguring the surrounding streetscape.

Gallery

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  Street-level sign

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  View of the building from the Westin Peachtree Plaza

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  View from the west

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  View of the tower at dusk

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  View of the building's pinnacle at night

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  View of the building while approaching from Peachtree Street

See also

• List of tallest buildings in the United States
• List of tallest buildings by U.S. state
• List of tallest buildings in Atlanta

External links

• Bank of America Plaza, official web site
• Bank of America Plaza on CTBUH Skyscraper Center
• Emporis listing
• SkyscraperPage listing

Records
Preceded by U.S. Bank Tower	Tallest building in America outside of New York and Chicago 1992-present	Succeeded by none