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Harbour Centre | |
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General information | |
Type | Mixed-use: Observation, office, commercial, restaurant |
Architectural style | Brutalist / Modernist |
Opening | 1977 |
Height | |
Architectural | 147 m (482 ft) (CTBUH) [1] |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 28 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | WZMH Architects |
Website | |
harbourcentre |
Harbour Centre is a skyscraper in the central business district of Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada which opened in 1977. The "Lookout" tower atop the office building makes it one of the tallest structures in Vancouver and a prominent landmark on the city's skyline. With its 360-degree viewing deck, it also serves as a tourist attraction with the Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant, offering a physically unobstructed view of the city.
Harbour Centre is located at 555 West Hastings Street in Downtown Vancouver. It is steps away from Waterfront Station, a major multi-modal transit hub which serves as the Downtown Vancouver terminal for various TransLink operations including SeaBus, West Coast Express, SkyTrain, Canada Line and buses. Simon Fraser University operates its downtown Harbour Centre campus in the adjoining Spencer building and houses the Center for Dialogue and Canadas World.
Vancouver Coast Guard Radio operated until 2015 from Harbour Centre, providing distress watch and vessel traffic services to the North Arm Fraser River, Burrard Inlet, Indian Arm, English Bay and Howe Sound.
The downtown Simpsons-Sears department store was located here before it closed in 1987.
During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, it served as the headquarters for several tech firms, including Stormix Technologies, NetNation and others.
Designed by WZMH Architects, the building is listed as being 28 stories tall, though the tower/observation deck extends above the 28 office floors (claimed to be approximately 40 stories in total). There is some disagreement as to the building's height. According to the Vancouver Lookout's website the observation deck is 168 m (551 ft) above the 'street level'. The CTBUH however lists the buildings architectural height as actually being 147 m (482 ft). [1] Furthermore, Skyscraperpage lists the buildings height to the roof as being only 139.6 m (458 ft). [2] This is stated to be the height from the Hastings Street entrance while the height from the back entrance on Cordova Street is 146 m (479 ft). It also lists the buildings pinnacle height to the tip of the antenna as being 177.1 m (581 ft). [2]
The building was British Columbia's tallest measured by pinnacle height until the construction of Living Shangri-La in 2009.
The Vancouver Lookout tourist attraction, located atop the Harbour Centre business building, was officially opened on August 13, 1977 by Neil Armstrong, whose footprint was imprinted onto cement and was on display on the viewing/observation deck until disappearing during renovations. Glass elevators whisk visitors 168 meters (553 feet) skyward from street level to the Observation Deck in 40 seconds.
In Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction? , a group of young teenage girls ride the famous glass elevator to the top to dine at the fictional "Above the Clouds" restaurant and the elevator breaks down. (S04E13 - "Above the Clouds"). Harbour Centre can also be seen in the Arrow episode "Dark Waters". The Harbour Centre is visible in the background along with the rest of the downtown Vancouver skyline at the beginning of The X-Files episode "2Shy". This building was also filmed in some episodes from the original MacGyver TV series in and around Vancouver. This building also had some shots from the TV series Danger Bay . There were also some shots from the Schwarzenegger film The 6th Day and the film Blade: Trinity . In The NeverEnding Story , the building is seen in the closing scene, when Bastian is flying with Falkor, to get some revenge over the kids.
The CN Tower is a 553.3 m-high (1,815.3 ft) concrete communications and observation tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Completed in 1976, it is located in downtown Toronto, built on the former Railway Lands. Its name "CN" referred to Canadian National, the railway company that built the tower. Following the railway's decision to divest non-core freight railway assets prior to the company's privatization in 1995, it transferred the tower to the Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation responsible for the government's real estate portfolio.
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Sydney Tower, also known as Centrepoint Tower, is the tallest structure in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, as well as the second-tallest observation tower in the Southern Hemisphere. Sydney Tower has also previously been known as AMP Tower and Centrepoint Tower, and colloquially as Flower Tower, Glower Tower, and Big Poke.
The Calgary Tower is a 190.8-metre (626 ft) free standing observation tower in the downtown core of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Originally called the Husky Tower, it was conceived as a joint venture between Marathon Realty Company Limited and Husky Oil as part of an urban renewal plan and to celebrate Canada's centennial of 1967. The tower was built at a cost of CA$3,500,000 and weighs approximately 10,884 tonnes, of which 60% is below ground. It opened to the public on June 30, 1968, as the tallest structure in Calgary, and the tallest in Canada outside Toronto. It was renamed the Calgary Tower in 1971.
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