200 Public Square (also known as the
Sohio Building,
Standard Oil building, the
BP America Building,
BP America Tower,
BP Tower, or the
BP Building) is the third tallest
skyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper...
in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
. The building, located on
Public SquarePublic Square is the central plaza in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It takes up four city blocks; Superior Avenue and Ontario Street cross through it. Cleveland's three tallest buildings, Key Tower, the BP Tower and the Terminal Tower, face the square...
in
Downtown ClevelandDowntown Cleveland is the central business district of the City of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Reinvestment in the area in the mid-1990s spurred a rebirth that continues to this day, with over $2 billion in capital projects slated to involve the downtown area over the next few years...
reaches 45 stories and 658 ft (201 m) and holds 1.2 million square feet (111,000 m²) of office space. Beginning in 2011, the building will be the Cleveland headquarters for
Huntington BancsharesHuntington Bancshares Inc. is a $55 billion Midwestern bank holding company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. It is the 29th largest American bank. As of October 22, 2008, it was listed on the S&P 500...
.
In November 1981,
Standard Oil of OhioStandard Oil of Ohio or Sohio was an American oil company that was acquired by British Petroleum, now called BP.It was one of the successor companies to Standard Oil after the antitrust breakup in 1911. Standard Oil of Ohio was the original Standard Oil company founded by John D. Rockefeller. It...
(Sohio) strengthened its commitment to Cleveland by announcing plans for a new skyscraper to be built on Public Square.
200 Public Square (also known as the
Sohio Building,
Standard Oil building, the
BP America Building,
BP America Tower,
BP Tower, or the
BP Building) is the third tallest
skyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper...
in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
. The building, located on
Public SquarePublic Square is the central plaza in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It takes up four city blocks; Superior Avenue and Ontario Street cross through it. Cleveland's three tallest buildings, Key Tower, the BP Tower and the Terminal Tower, face the square...
in
Downtown ClevelandDowntown Cleveland is the central business district of the City of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Reinvestment in the area in the mid-1990s spurred a rebirth that continues to this day, with over $2 billion in capital projects slated to involve the downtown area over the next few years...
reaches 45 stories and 658 ft (201 m) and holds 1.2 million square feet (111,000 m²) of office space. Beginning in 2011, the building will be the Cleveland headquarters for
Huntington BancsharesHuntington Bancshares Inc. is a $55 billion Midwestern bank holding company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. It is the 29th largest American bank. As of October 22, 2008, it was listed on the S&P 500...
.
In November 1981,
Standard Oil of OhioStandard Oil of Ohio or Sohio was an American oil company that was acquired by British Petroleum, now called BP.It was one of the successor companies to Standard Oil after the antitrust breakup in 1911. Standard Oil of Ohio was the original Standard Oil company founded by John D. Rockefeller. It...
(Sohio) strengthened its commitment to Cleveland by announcing plans for a new skyscraper to be built on Public Square. Initially, it was supposed to surpass the
Terminal TowerThe Terminal Tower is a landmark skyscraper located on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It was built during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 1930s, and was the second-tallest building in the world when it was completed. The Terminal Tower stood as the tallest building in North America...
in height, but city officials rejected this idea, insisting that the Terminal Tower should remain the city's tallest building. The BP Building was designed by
Hellmuth, Obata and KassabaumHOK is a global architecture, interiors, engineering, planning and consulting firm. HOK is the largest U.S.-based architecture-engineering firm and the world's fourth-largest architectural firm. HOK is also the country's leading design firm in terms of non-U.S. fee growth and the second-largest...
, and the
postmodernPostmodern architecture was an international style whose first examples are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but which did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture...
structure is angled in order be parallel to both Euclid and Superior Avenues. Demolition began in 1982 with the
implosionIn the controlled demolition industry, building implosion is the strategic placing of explosive material and timing of its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds, minimizing the physical damage to its immediate surroundings...
of two former Cleveland landmarks, the
Burnham and RootBurnham and Root was the name of the company that John Wellborn Root and Daniel Hudson Burnham established as one of Chicago's most famous architectural companies of the nineteenth century....
Cuyahoga Building (
1892The year 1892 in architecture involved some significant events.-Buildings:*Heinävesi Church, the largest wooden church in Finland. Designed by Josef Stenbäck, built in 1890-1891 and consecrated in 1892....
) and the 16-story George B. Post Williamson Building (
1900The year 1900 in architecture involved some significant events.-Buildings:* July 19 - The Paris Métro opens, with entrances designed by Hector Guimard in 1899.* Antoni Gaudí begins work on the Parc Güell, which he works on for the next fourteen years....
). The structure was completed in
1985The year 1985 in architecture involved some significant events.-Buildings:* The Tashkent Tower in Tashkent, Uzbekistan is completed after 7 years construction....
and was officially opened in 1987 as the
BPBP plc is the third largest global energy company, the 5th largest company in the world, the UK's largest company, a multinational oil company with headquarters in St James's, City of Westminster, London...
America Tower when British Petroleum purchased the remaining 45% of Sohio and merged its North American holdings to form BP America, Inc., headquartered in the new building.
Claes OldenburgClaes Oldenburg is a sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects.-Biography:...
's
Free StampFree Stamp is an outdoor sculpture located in Cleveland, Ohio's Willard Park. Created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, it has been called the "world's largest rubber stamp". The dimensions of the sculpture are by by ....
sculpture was originally commissioned by Alton Whitehouse and other Sohio executives to stand in front of the tower, but BP officials did not appreciate it, and donated the sculpture to the City of Cleveland. After some modifications, the city installed it in Willard Park, adjacent to Cleveland City Hall.
Prior to the construction of the
Key TowerKey Tower is a skyscraper on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio designed by architect César Pelli. It is the tallest building in both the city of Cleveland and the state of Ohio, the 18th tallest building in the United States, and the 59th tallest building in the world...
, the BP Building was the second most prominent skyscraper in the city, often photographed next to the adjacent Terminal Tower as a twin emblem of Cleveland. It contains 36 elevators, 10 escalators, 3 fountains, 1 waterfall, 1,500 plants, and several works of art.
When BP purchased Chicago-based
AmocoAmoco Corporation, originally Standard Oil Company , was a global chemical and oil company, founded in 1889 around a refinery located in Whiting, Indiana. It later absorbed the American Oil Company founded in Baltimore in 1910 and incorporated in 1922 by Louis Blaustein and his son Jacob. Amoco is...
in 1998, the company announced that it would be moving its headquarters from Cleveland to Chicago. The building was purchased by the Chicago-based
Equity Office Properties TrustEquity Office Properties Trust, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is the largest owner of office buildings in the United States. It was formed in 1976 by Samuel Zell and in February 2007, was acquired by the Blackstone Group for $23 billion plus the assumption of $16 billion in debt...
in 1996 for $144 million, which in turn sold it to Harbor Group International in June 2005 for $141.25 million. Harbor Group partnered with Electra Real Estate (TASE: ELTR) to purchase the building. The building was subsequently renamed 200 Public Square. Most Clevelanders and the Harbor Group still recognize it as the BP Tower, although many still refer to it as the Sohio Building.
External links