AT&T Building At 1200 Clay St.

[Highrise Tower]

Continuing our Southwestern Bell buildings, I went for a walk today and noticed this small industrial-ish AT&T building.

Mainly covered by trees, it was hard to take a photograph. 

[Ross]

That was the Clay Central office that was built in the early 1970s in the brutalist style that was popular for commercial buildings at the time. AT&T owns the entire block that building sits on. The property was bought by Southwestern Bell in 1971.

I also learned today that the Capitol exchange building at 1121 Capitol is still owned by AT&T. I think the Clay building was added to provide additional capacity for Downtown telephone service as the number of workers adn phones expanded rapidly in the 1970's.

The Capitol Street building is visible here https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7583189,-95.361676,3a,75y,33.45h,91.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sVuwgWv5vaT-XsMi5D2fK4g!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DVuwgWv5vaT-XsMi5D2fK4g%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D33.446382813931514%26pitch%3D-1.867674624779383%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu

Interestingly, the building at 1114 Texas, directly behind the Western portion of the exchange building, was owned by the phone company until 1998, when it was sold to an Arron Wiese, who later sold it to the current owner. It is currently the Hyatt Place hotel