Williams Tower
Encyclopedia
The Williams Tower is a skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...

 located in the Uptown District
Uptown Houston
The Uptown District of Houston is located 6.2 miles west of downtown and is centered along Post Oak Boulevard, Westheimer Road , and the Galleria...

 of Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

. It was designed by architects Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...

 and John Burgee
John Burgee
__notoc__John Burgee is an American architect noted for his contributions to Postmodern architecture. He was a partner of Philip Johnson from 1967 to 1991, creating together the partnership firm Johnson/Burgee Architects. Their landmark collaborations together included Pennzoil Place in Houston...

, in association with Houston-based Morris Architects (formerly Morris-Aubry Architects), and erected in 1983. The tower is among Houston's most visible buildings. The building is the 4th-tallest in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, the 22nd-tallest in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and the 102nd-tallest building in the world. It is the tallest building in Houston outside of Downtown Houston
Downtown Houston
Downtown Houston is the largest business district of Houston, Texas, United States. Downtown Houston, the city's central business district, contains the headquarters of many prominent companies. There is an extensive network of pedestrian tunnels and skywalks connecting the buildings of the district...

. The building has the United States headquarters of the Hines Interests real estate firm.

History

Hines Interests LP was the original developer of the tower. In 2008, an affiliate of Hines purchased the Williams Tower for $271.5 million. The building was offered along with the parking garage, a 2.3 acre (0.9307778 ha) tract across the street from the Williams Tower, and a 48% stake in the Williams Waterwall
Williams Waterwall
The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park, also known as the Williams Waterwall, is a multi-story sculptural fountain which sits at the south end of Williams Tower in the Uptown District of Houston. It and its surrounding park were built as an architectural amenity to the adjacent tower. Both the fountain...

 and the surrounding park; Hines had already owned the other 52% of the waterwall.

In 2002, Ryan John Hartley climbed the Williams Tower unharnessed and jumped from the 30th story committing suicide. He had on him a political note that did not detail if it was his intention to jump.

Major tenants

The building was originally named for its major tenant, Transco Energy corporation. The name stayed on the building until 1999 after Hines, the building's owner, agreed to change the name of the building some four years after Transco was bought by Williams in 1995. The building once again bears the name of its major tenant, the Williams
Williams Companies
The Williams Companies, Inc. is an energy company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its core business is natural gas exploration, production, processing, and transportation, with additional petroleum and electricity generation assets...

 energy company, which is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...

. Even after the name change, the building is often referred to as "the Transco" by long-time Houston residents. In the spring of 2008, Hines again purchased the Tower for 300 million. It is insured at 500 million.

Significance

At 64 stories and 909 feet (277.1 m) above the ground level, the Williams Tower is the tallest building in Houston outside of Downtown Houston
Downtown Houston
Downtown Houston is the largest business district of Houston, Texas, United States. Downtown Houston, the city's central business district, contains the headquarters of many prominent companies. There is an extensive network of pedestrian tunnels and skywalks connecting the buildings of the district...

. When it was constructed in 1983, it was also the world's tallest skyscraper outside of a city's central business district
Central business district
A central business district is the commercial and often geographic heart of a city. In North America this part of a city is commonly referred to as "downtown" or "city center"...

.

The building is unique in that it was built to function as two separate towers stacked directly on top of one another, one comprising the first forty floors and the other the forty-first to sixty-fourth. The building has separate banks of elevators and lobbies for each of the two building sections. A majority of the bottom 40 floors are occupied by Williams. The remainder of the building is occupied by a variety of tenants. The building's stepback design suggests one of Johnson's earlier (and smaller) works, the IDS Center
IDS Center
The IDS Center is the tallest building in the state of Minnesota at 792 feet . Opened in 1974 as the IDS Centre, it stood 775 feet 6 inches , though a 16-foot garage for window washing equipment was added at a later date...

 in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

.

Williams Tower was named "Skyscraper of the Century" in the December 1999 issue of Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Austin, Texas. Texas Monthly is published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. and was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education...

magazine. Paul Gapp of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

said that the building became an "instant classic" when it opened. Paul Goldberger of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

said that the tower gave Post Oak Boulevard "a center, an anchor, which most outtowns lack."

Features

On the 51st floor is a sky lobby and observation deck, which due to security reasons is no longer open to the public.

During the night-time hours, the building is defined by a 7,000 watt
Watt
The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...

 beacon
Beacon
A beacon is an intentionally conspicuous device designed to attract attention to a specific location.Beacons can also be combined with semaphoric or other indicators to provide important information, such as the status of an airport, by the colour and rotational pattern of its airport beacon, or of...

 that sweeps across the sky and can be seen up to 40 miles (65 km) away on a clear night. Topped by such a beacon, the tower hearkens back to the Palmolive Building
Palmolive Building
The Palmolive Building, formerly the Playboy Building, is a 37-story Art Deco building at 919 N. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Built by Holabird & Root, it was completed in 1929 and was home to Colgate-Palmolive-Peet....

 in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. The building, along with its beacon, is a Houston landmark that identifies the Uptown Houston
Uptown Houston
The Uptown District of Houston is located 6.2 miles west of downtown and is centered along Post Oak Boulevard, Westheimer Road , and the Galleria...

 district.

The building is connected to a 10 level, 3,208 car parking garage by a sky bridge. The bridge also connects the building to retail outlets, like the Galleria and such as, and two Federal Aviation Administration
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration is the national aviation authority of the United States. An agency of the United States Department of Transportation, it has authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S...

-licensed helipads. In a grass field adjacent to the Williams Tower is another Houston landmark, the Williams Waterwall
Williams Waterwall
The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park, also known as the Williams Waterwall, is a multi-story sculptural fountain which sits at the south end of Williams Tower in the Uptown District of Houston. It and its surrounding park were built as an architectural amenity to the adjacent tower. Both the fountain...

.

The Houston Business Journal said that the tower was "designed to be energy efficient." The building received the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star
Energy Star
Energy Star is an international standard for energy efficient consumer products originated in the United States of America. It was first created as a United States government program during the early 1990s, but Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan and the European Union have also adopted...

 label for each year since 2000 in which the building was eligible to receive the award. As of 2009 the building managers are seeking to gain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design consists of a suite of rating systems for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings, homes and neighborhoods....

 (LEED) certification from the United States Green Building Council
United States Green Building Council
The U.S. Green Building Council , co-founded by Mike Italiano, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi in 1993, is a non-profit trade organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed, built, and operated...

.

Hurricane Ike

On the morning of September 13, 2008, during Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike was the second-costliest hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States, the costliest hurricane ever to impact Cuba and the second most active hurricane to reach the Canadian mainland in the Great Lakes Region after Hurricane Hazel in 1954...

, the top of the tower was damaged near the rotating beacon and many windows were blown out. The high-rise suffered over $3.5 million in wind damages. Twelve of the 49 elevators were damaged, most by water damage due to roof failures and others due to extreme building sway.

See also


External links

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