BellSouth Center (Atlanta)

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Bellsouth Headquarters Building, Atlanta

Bellsouth Headquarters Building is a 677-ft. (206-meter), 47-story skyscraper in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia. Completed in 1982, it will serve as the regional headquarters of AT&T's Southeast division following their buyout of BellSouth. Previously, it housed BellSouth Telecommunications headquarters, whose employees refer to it simply as "The Tower". BellSouth Corporation headquarters is located in the Campanile building.

The company, then called Southern Bell, originally planned to build the tower one block further east at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Peachtree Street. This would have required the razing of the historic Fox Theatre which would have been an especially great loss to the city after the downtown Loew's Grand Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1978. Tremendous opposition, protests, fundraising, and petition drives within the community prevented the Fox's demolition. Even Liberace spoke out on behalf of the "Fabulous Fox". In the end, a complicated deal was struck to build on an alternate site on West Peachtree Street.

The building has a direct entrance to the North Avenue MARTA Station, which is located at the southern end of the complex and was built concurrently with the building (the station's structure is actually integrated with the skyscraper's foundation). In 2002, BellSouth completed construction of two additional mid-rise buildings adjacent to the tower to form its Bellsouth Midtown Center campus as part of its effort to consolidate office space around mass transit stations.

BellSouth Center building, Atlanta.

The architects who designed the tower were Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP and Rosser International, Inc. The general contractor for its construction was Beers Skanska, Inc.