Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta)

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• published: 03 Oct 2011
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Here is a video of the Bank of America Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia. This video is available in high definition. Please subscribe! :) Bank of America Plaza is a skyscraper located in the SoNo district of Atlanta, Georgia. At 312 m (1,024 ft) the tower is the 51st-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 the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere outside of Chicago and New York City, Georgia's tallest building, and the tallest building in any U.S. state capital. It has 55 stories of office space and was completed in 1992, when it was called the NationsBank Building. Originally intended to be the headquarters for C&S;/Sovran Bank, it became NCNB/NationsBank's property following the 1991 merger of C&S;/Sovran and NCNB. The Bank of America Plaza was the last American skyscraper built to be one of the ten tallest in the world, until the Trump International Hotel and Tower was built in Chicago. Currently, the largest tenant is the law firm of Troutman Sanders. Designed in the Postmodern architectural 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%) gold leaf. The open-lattice steel pyramid underneath the obelisk glows orange at night due to lighting. 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-CA 32, WANN-LD 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. 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. Future possibilities The owner of the building was previously in negotiations to convert the lower 16 floors into a 5-star hotel. The 315 hotel guest rooms planned in the conversion would have required Bank of America to relocate its offices out of the building.