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Unamed Supertall That Was Never Built


Urbannizer

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Kso I was searching around the Internet today and found this:

HoustonUnbuiltTowers-1-1.jpg

Looks to be around the 1,000ft range. KPF was the architect. You can clearly see 3 Allen Center and the Doubletree Hotel in the background. Pretty sure it was proposed sometime in the 80's. Anyone have more info on this one? Sad thing that it did'nt happen. :(

KPF designed a series of striking post-modern towers during the 80's that unfortunately were never built. I know its off topic slightly but I thought it was worth showing these 2 skyscrapers that were both proposed by the practise for Houston. The one on the left was KPF's entry into The Bank of the Southwest competion that came runner up to Helmut Jahns winning but unbuilt design. The other tower is unamed but intended for a site on the fringes of Houstons CBD. Its a pity none of them, including Travelstead, were ever built IMO.

http://img.photobuck.../larven/kpf.jpg

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Kso I was searching around the Internet today and found this:

Looks to be around the 1,000ft range. KPF was the architect. You can clearly see 3 Allen Center and the Doubletree Hotel in the background. Pretty sure it was proposed sometime in the 80's. Anyone have more info on this one? Sad thing that it did'nt happen. :(

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Wow, this one (first one) is weird looking, kind of Russian like.

kpf.jpg

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the Block 265 tower was supposed to be 90ish floors... the FAA probably would have made them reduce that to 75 like they did with the Texas Commerce Bank tower..

Block 265, according to a map printed in the Houston Post back in the late 70's, was directly across Bagby from the Doubletree

Traffic in Houston was BAD in the early 80's- much worse than now! Can you imagine how bad it would have been if there were an additional 30000 people working downtown in BOTSW, Block 265, and the also never built Campeau tower?

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Every time I read about the Block 265 tower, I die a little that it was never built, knowing that this is now in its place:

166621_835853141816_37526399_42928596_6293520_n.jpg

Really wish there was some other solution to parking in downtown than taking up most of it was parking lots and garages.

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Every time I read about the Block 265 tower, I die a little that it was never built, knowing that this is now in its place:

1621_835853141816_37526399_42928596_6293520_n.jpg

Really wish there was some other solution to parking in downtown than taking up most of it was parking lots and garages.

Too many ppl live too far out to make too much of a difference in the parking lot market.

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Too many ppl live too far out to make too much of a difference in the parking lot market.

I we could just build an efficient mass transit system...

Like have large park-and-rides out away from the center of the city, off every freeway into downtown, and had a light rail connecting downtown to those lots.

We could have about a dozen large parking garages miles from downtown, and the need for ridiculous traffic and obscene amounts of parking downtown would be hugely reduced.

Oh well. A man can dream... ;)

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Yeah, you can see Wells Fargo going up in the background. Looks like it was pretty close to being topped out when they made this rendering which would have been circa 1980.

Wells Fargo (nee' Allied Bank) had just completed the installation of its exterior glass approximately two weeks before Hurricane Alicia struck (August, 1983.)

it's a render pasted in to where the BotSW Tower was to be built

173478.jpg

From Emporis:

The entire 79th floor was intended to be an observation deck which could be accessed for a small fee.

The cleared block for this tower eventually became a street-level parking lot.

The Southwest Tower was demolished to make way for this tower.

This proposal won a design competition 1982, but was never built. The "romantic modernist" design was a precursor to other Murphy/Jahn skyscrapers such as Park Avenue Tower (New York), One Liberty Place and Two Liberty Place (Philadelphia), and MesseTurm (Frankfurt).

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448911.jpg

I will never give up on this building. Someone will surely resurrect it. Here it is almost 30 years later and people are still talking about it. At the same time, I am so glad they never built that hideous russian/asian monstrosity. It would have ruined Houston's skyline.

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I will never give up on this building. Someone will surely resurrect it. Here it is almost 30 years later and people are still talking about it. At the same time, I am so glad they never built that hideous russian/asian monstrosity. It would have ruined Houston's skyline.

Yeah, it's not bad. I wouldn't mind it one bit if they built it, but I think they should tweak it just a tad to make it look a little more modern.

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  • 2 years later...

More of the Block 265 proposal from a video presentation that was emailed to me. The video dates back to March 1986, after the project was called off. I think many of you would not like the tower if it did exist today because of the location, the tower stands out. It was proposed to be 82-floors.

 

Not the best quality, old video: 

 

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10570854394_1e65fdd24f_b.jpg

 

10570813636_f4714716cd_b.jpg

 

10570852024_c564c05927_b.jpg

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