Oak Tower | |
---|---|
General information | |
Status | Complete |
Type | Office |
Location | 324 East 11th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106 |
Coordinates | 39°06′04″N94°34′44″W / 39.1012°N 94.5789°W Coordinates: 39°06′04″N94°34′44″W / 39.1012°N 94.5789°W |
Construction started | 1917 |
Completed | 1920 |
Renovated | 1928–1929 (addition, doubling the height) |
Owner | Cherry Hill Properties LLC [2021] |
Height | |
Roof | 379 ft (116 m) |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 28 (+2 below-grade) |
Design and construction | |
Architect | Hoit, Price & Barnes/I.R. Timlin |
Main contractor | Swenson Construction Company |
Oak Tower, also called the Bell Telephone Building, is a 28-story skyscraper in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Hoit, Price & Barnes, a local firm that conceived many of Kansas City's landmark structures, designed the building in association with I.R. Timlin as the headquarters of the Bell Telephone Co.'s newly consolidated Southwestern System.
The ground was broken at Eleventh and Oak Streets in 1917, but due to shortages of manpower and materials during the First World War, construction was delayed and was not completed until 1920. [1] The new building served as Southwestern Bell's general headquarters for only a year before the company moved its main office to St. Louis. [2] Thereafter the tower served as the headquarters of Southwestern Bell's operations in Missouri.
The tower was originally 14 stories (185 feet), without any setbacks, but the fast-growing telephone company soon required more space. An addition completed in 1929 doubled the tower's height and made it the tallest building in Missouri until the Kansas City Power & Light Building surpassed it in 1931. [3] [4]
Oak Tower's top half was built with Haydite, the first modern structural lightweight concrete, which had recently been invented and patented in Kansas City by Stephen J. Hayde. The tower's 1929 expansion was the first major project to use the new building material, and it allowed the addition of fourteen new stories, six more than would have been possible using conventional concrete. [5] [6]
The building's contractor, Swenson Construction Co., also built several other landmark Kansas City buildings including the Kansas City Power & Light Building, 909 Walnut, Jackson County Courthouse, Kansas City City Hall, Kansas City Live Stock Exchange and the Western Auto Building. [7]
On January 11, 1965, during a snowstorm, a single-engine airplane crashed into the 28th story of the building at the corner facing Oak Street and 11th Street, killing all four people on board. [8]
Oak Tower's original terra-cotta facade was covered in white stucco when it was sold in 1974.
In 2021 Oak Tower was sold.
Today Oak Tower is one of the key fiber transit buildings for Kansas City and houses a 9,000-square-foot (840 m2) Tier II data center. [9] In 2013, the colocation data center is operated by Netsolus and is carrier neutral. [10] In September 2018, the Tier II data center, operated by Netsolus, is 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) and is home to several key transit and telecommunications providers including Cogent, Verizon, and Zayo. [11] Netsolus also operates data centers in Phoenix, Denver, and Omaha. [9] [10] [12] [13] Founded in 2000, Netsolus is located in Oak Tower at Suite 1640. [12] [14]
Emporis GmbH is a real estate data mining company with headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. The company collects and publishes data and photographs of buildings worldwide.
The architecture of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, especially Kansas City, Missouri, includes major works by some of the world's most distinguished architects and firms, including McKim, Mead and White; Jarvis Hunt; Wight and Wight; Graham, Anderson, Probst and White; Hoit, Price & Barnes; Frank Lloyd Wright; the Office of Mies van der Rohe; Barry Byrne; Edward Larrabee Barnes; Harry Weese; and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
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Kansas City City Hall is the official seat of government for the city of Kansas City, Missouri. Located in downtown, it is a 29-story skyscraper with an observation deck. Completed in 1937, the building has a Beaux-Arts and Art-Deco style with numerous architectural features and ornamentation throughout. One Kansas City Place was modeled as an 80s version of city hall, and is the tallest building in Kansas City.
Hoit, Price & Barnes was a prominent Kansas City architectural firm in the early 20th century. It designed several skyscrapers and mansions including three of the current ten tallest buildings in Kansas City; the Kansas City Power and Light Building, 909 Walnut, and Oak Tower.
The Southwestern Bell Building is a 28-story, 121.0 m (397.0 ft) skyscraper constructed to be the headquarters of Southwestern Bell Telephone in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. At the time of its construction it was Missouri's tallest building.
One AT&T Center is a 44-story building in downtown St. Louis, Missouri at 909 Chestnut Street on the Gateway Mall. It is Missouri's largest building by area with 1,400,000 square feet (130,000 m2). The building is currently completely vacant and was acquired by new ownership in 2019.
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Irving Ray Timlin was an American architect. He spent his entire career with the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, where he was chief architect during the company's rapid expansion in the first half of the twentieth century. From the 1910s to the 1940s, Timlin designed or co-designed 140 buildings for the company in cities across the midwestern and southwestern United States.
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