555 California Street

555 California Street
Former names Bank of America Center
General information
Type Commercial offices
Location 555 California Street
San Francisco, California
Coordinates
Completed 1969
Height
Roof 237.44 m (779.0 ft)
Technical details
Floor count 52
Floor area 1,500,000 sq ft (140,000 m2)
Elevator count 38
Design and construction
Owner Vornado Realty Trust
Management Shorenstein Company
Main contractor Dinwiddie Construction
Architect Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
Wurster, Benardi and Emmons
Structural engineer H. J. Brunnier Associates
References
[1][2][3]

555 California Street, formerly Bank of America Center, is a 52-story, 779 ft (237.4 m) skyscraper in San Francisco, California. It is the second tallest building in the city and a focal point of the Financial District. Completed in 1969, the tower served as the world headquarters of Bank of America until the 1998 merger with NationsBank, when the company moved its headquarters to the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A 70 percent interest was acquired by Vornado Realty Trust from foreign investors in March 2007 with a 30 percent limited partnership interest still owned by Donald Trump, while continuing to be managed by the Shorenstein Company.[4]

Contents

Background

555 California Street was meant to be a deliberate and unambiguous display of the wealth, power, and importance of Bank of America. To that end, the center was handled by the architecture firms Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, with architect Pietro Belluschi consulting. The structural engineering was performed by the San Francisco firm H. J. Brunnier Associates. The skyscraper incorporates thousands of bay windows thanks to its unique design, meant to improve the rental value and to symbolize the bay windows common in San Francisco residential real estate. At the north foot of the skyscraper is a large plaza named in honor of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini that is often shaded during the day, leading to it being criticized as cold and windswept by many.

Within the plaza is the 200-ton black Swedish granite sculpture "Transcendence" by Masayuki Nagare that, while resembling a liver, is locally and derisively known as the "Banker's Heart." Nearly the entire block—the skyscraper, the banking hall, the plaza, the stairways, and the sidewalks—is clad in costly polished or rough carnelian granite. An exclusive restaurant, the "Carnelian Room", is located on the 52nd floor. The elevator to this restaurant is one of the few publicly accessible high-speed elevators in San Francisco. Due in large part to the late–2000s economic recession, however, the restaurant closed at midnight New Year's Eve, 2009.[5]

In 1971, 555 California Street, then just two years old, was featured at the beginning of the film Dirty Harry. It was from the roof of the building that the killer shoots his victim in the, now closed down, pool atop what is currently the Hilton Financial District hotel on Kearny Street. The film shows wide panoramic views of San Francisco taken from the roof of the building. In 1974, 555 California Street was again used extensively for filming of a box-office hit, this time The Towering Inferno, in which the outside plaza substituted for the film's fictional skyscraper, the infamous Glass Tower. The rooftop setting of the building used in Dirty Harry was also used a decade later in the Chuck Norris film An Eye for an Eye (1981).

Together with the Transamerica Pyramid, 555 California Street is evidence of the direction San Francisco's downtown was moving during the 1960s before numerous campaigns against high-rise buildings in the 1970s and 1980s forced development to move south of Market Street.

Major tenants

See also

References

  1. ^ 555 California Street at Emporis
  2. ^ 555 California Street at SkyscraperPage
  3. ^ 555 California Street at Structurae
  4. ^ Joseph Machnow (March 16, 2007). "Vornado to Acquire 70% Controlling Interest in 1290 Avenue of the Americas and 555 California Street". Vornado Realty Trust. http://www.vno.com/press/display.phtml?id=2737. Retrieved 2010-01-14. 
  5. ^ Food and Wine Staff (3 September 2009). "Carnelian Room Calling it Quits". The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/03/DDP419E2TR.DTL. Retrieved 2010-01-14. 

External links

Timeline of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi

Central Tower (91 m) (1898) · Key Bank Center (71 m) (1911) · Smith Tower (141 m) (1914) · Kansas City Power and Light Building (145.1 m) (1931) · Mercantile National Bank Building (166 m) (1942) · Republic Center (183 m) (1954) · Sheraton Dallas Hotel (183 m) (1959) · ExxonMobil Building (185 m) (1963) · Elm Place (191 m) (1965) · 555 California Street (237 m) (1969) · Transamerica Pyramid (260 m) (1972) · Aon Center (262 m) (1973) · JPMorgan Chase Tower (305 m) (1982) · U.S. Bank Tower (310 m) (1990)

California State Capitol (64 m) (1874) · Central Tower (91 m) (1898) · San Francisco City Hall (94 m) (1915) · Commercial Union Assurance Building (94 m) (1921) · 225 Bush Street (100 m) (1922) · PacBell Building (133 m) (1925) · Russ Building (133 m) (1927) · Los Angeles City Hall (138 m) (1928) · Hartford Building (142 m) (1965) · 44 Montgomery (172 m) (1967) · Bank of America Center (237 m) (1969) · Transamerica Pyramid (260 m) (1972) · Aon Center (262 m) (1973) · U.S. Bank Tower (310 m) (1990)

Mills Building (47 m) (1892) · Central Tower (91 m) (1898) · San Francisco City Hall (94 m) (1915) · Commercial Union Assurance Building (94 m) (1921) · 225 Bush Street (100 m) (1922) · PacBell Building (133 m) (1925) · Russ Building (133 m) (1927) · Hartford Building (142 m) (1965) · 44 Montgomery (172 m) (1967) · Bank of America Center (237 m) (1969) · Transamerica Pyramid (260 m) (1972)