UBS Tower | |
---|---|
General information | |
Type | office |
Architectural style | International Style |
Location | 315 Deaderick Street Nashville, Tennessee United States |
Coordinates | 36°09′57″N86°46′47″W / 36.1659°N 86.7796°W |
Completed | 1974 |
Height | |
Roof | 354 ft (108 m) |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 28 |
Floor area | 602,348 sq ft (55,960.0 m2) [1] |
UBS Tower is a 108-meter (354-foot), 28-story skyscraper at 315 Deaderick Street in Nashville, Tennessee.
The tower was completed in 1974. It was originally called the First American Center but the name was changed when First American National Bank merged with AmSouth Bank. A major renovation of the building's ground-level exterior followed the name change. The name then changed again to Regions Center when AmSouth merged with Regions. It is the former Tennessee headquarters of Regions Financial Corporation. [2] Regions moved in 2013 but still leases 250,000 square feet of space in the building. [3] Currently the Swiss Banking behemoth UBS has leased 138,000 square feet of the building in an effort to move back office jobs from southeast Nashville to downtown Nashville. This deal expires in 2034. [4] The name of the building was renamed from Regions Center to UBS Tower. [5]
The building served as the Tennessee headquarters and a branch office for Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions Bank. [2] It is also home to many non-related businesses who lease space in the upper floors. It was once the main office and headquarters of First American National Bank. AmSouth acquired the slightly larger First American National Corporation in 2000 after the latter involved itself in several unprofitable mergers. On May 25, 2006, AmSouth announced it is merging with Regions Financial. Regions announced its move to One Nashville Place in late September 2012. [3]
A relatively small parking garage is located beneath.
The site received national attention in 1971 when remains of a saber-toothed cat were discovered during excavation of the property. A number of noted archaeologists visited the site following its initial discovery, including Ronald Spores, Kent Flannery, Vance Haynes, and Edwin Williamson. [6] John Guilday of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History conducted an examination of all faunal material recovered from the site, and published the results in the July 1977 issue of the Journal of the Tennessee Academy of Sciences. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Although Guilday may have conducted an inventory of the human remains from the site, none was ever published.
Radiocarbon analysis of human remains from the cave returned dates of 2390+/-145 B.P. and 1690+/-115 B.P. These remains were collected from an upper zone approximately 16-feet above the saber-tooth bones. The human remains are believed to be from the Woodland Period and originated thousands of years after the Smilodon find. [12] According to Guilday (1977), collagen from the Smilodon remains returned radiocarbon dates of 9410+/-155 B.P. and 10,035+/-650 B.P. These dates are extremely late for the presence of Smilodon in the Southeast, both contemporaneous with the Dalton horizon and overlapping Paleoindian occupations along the Cumberland River by at least 1,000 years. [13] As such, the dates for the Smilodon remains from the First American site should be regarded with some skepticism.
As a result of interest that the site generated, First American Bank agreed to engineer around the small percentage of cave deposits that had not been destroyed. These deposits were vaulted over using steel and concrete, and preserved in an artificial cavern beneath the lowest parking garage level. [14] An access hatch and ladder provided entry to the space. Newspaper and magazine articles from the early- to mid-1970s show there was clear interest among the archaeological community in conducting further excavations in what remained of the cave. In 1973 Time Magazine reported that the bank was "preparing to let archaeologists resume their digging." [15]
Unfortunately, it appears that any plans to conduct additional investigations were abandoned around the time bank construction was completed. The final reference to additional excavation occurs in 1976, when Bob Ferguson wrote that he was "certain much remains to be discovered when work resumes in the cavern, so thoughtfully preserved by the First American National Bank." [16]
In 1978, a group of cavers from the Nashville Grotto visited the site but were underwhelmed by the lack of intact cavern or open passages. [17] [18] The next documented entry into the cave did not occur until 2008, when archaeologists from the Tennessee Division of Archaeology revisited the site. [19]
Regions Bank and UBS maintained a display in their first floor lobby that included bones from the Smilodon and other faunal material from the site. In 2016, the display was moved to Bridgestone Arena. [20] Smilodon remains on display include portions of the lower jaw and molars, vertebral column, ribs, humerus, metacarpals, and metatarsals. A replica of a Smilodon skull from the La Brea Tar Pits serves as the centerpiece of the display. The Smilodon upper canine that led to the site discovery in 1971 is not on display, and is apparently no longer in the collection. Conventional wisdom among bank and facility management personnel is that the canine is now in the collection of the Smithsonian; however, that institution holds no record of the artifact. [21]
The find of the Smilodon remains was the impetus for the logo of the Nashville Predators hockey team and their mascot Gnash. In the early years of the team's existence, a video was shown on the jumbotron of a computer-generated saber-toothed cat emerging from the ground beneath downtown Nashville before the team exited the locker room prior to each home game. The logo for AmSouth (as well as its predecessor, First American) was once prominently featured in the video but was digitally deleted when the bank dropped sponsorship of the team following the 2002-2003 NHL season.
The Nashville Predators are a professional ice hockey team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Predators compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference, and have played their home games at Bridgestone Arena since 1998. Their television broadcasting rights are held by Bally Sports South, and the Nashville Predators Radio Network flagship station is WPRT-FM. The Predators are currently affiliated with two minor league teams: the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League (AHL), and the Atlanta Gladiators of the ECHL.
Smilodon is an extinct genus of felids. It is one of the best known saber-toothed predators and prehistoric mammals. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats, belonging to the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae, with an estimated date of divergence from the ancestor of living cats around 20 million years ago. Smilodon was one of the last surviving machairodonts alongside the distantly related Homotherium. Smilodon lived in the Americas during the Pleistocene epoch. The genus was named in 1842 based on fossils from Brazil; the generic name means "scalpel" or "two-edged knife" combined with "tooth". Three species are recognized today: S. gracilis, S. fatalis, and S. populator. The two latter species were probably descended from S. gracilis, which itself probably evolved from Megantereon. The hundreds of specimens obtained from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles constitute the largest collection of Smilodon fossils.
Homotherium is an extinct genus of scimitar-toothed cat belonging to the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae that inhabited North America, South America, Eurasia, and Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs from around 4 million to 12,000 years ago. It was one of the last surviving members of the subfamily alongside the more famous sabertooth Smilodon, to which it was distantly related. It was a large cat, comparable in size to a lion. In comparison to Smilodon, the canines of Homotherium were shorter, and it was probably adapted to running down rather than ambushing prey, and is suggested to have engaged in cooperative hunting.
La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. La Brea Tar Pits is a registered National Natural Landmark.
Peter Wilhelm Lund was a Danish Brazilian paleontologist, zoologist, and archeologist. He spent most of his life working and living in Brazil. He is considered the father of Brazilian paleontology as well as archaeology.
A saber-tooth is any member of various extinct groups of predatory therapsids, predominantly carnivoran mammals, that are characterized by long, curved saber-shaped canine teeth which protruded from the mouth when closed. Saber-toothed mammals have been found almost worldwide from the Eocene epoch to the end of the Pleistocene epoch.
The American lion, with the species name meaning "savage" or "cruel", also called the North American lion) is an extinct pantherine cat native to North America during the Late Pleistocene from around 130,000 to 12,800 years ago. Genetic evidence suggests that its closest living relative is the lion, with the American lion representing an offshoot from the lineage of the largely Eurasian cave lion, from which it is suggested to have split around 165,000 years ago. Its fossils have been found across North America, from Canada to Mexico. It was about 25% larger than the modern lion, making it one of the largest known felids to ever exist, and an important apex predator.
Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae. They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe, with the earliest species known from the Middle Miocene, with the last surviving species becoming extinct around Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition.
First American National Bank was a subsidiary of First American Corporation, a financial institution based in Nashville, Tennessee, that served the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and Virginia. It was headquartered in the First American Center in downtown Nashville.
Robert Bruce Ferguson was an American country music songwriter and record producer who was instrumental in establishing Nashville, Tennessee as a center of country music. He was also a movie producer, and Choctaw Indian historian. Ferguson is best known for writing the bestselling songs "On the Wings of a Dove" and "The Carroll County Accident". The "Carroll County Accident" won the Country Music Association Song of the Year in 1969. In 1983 "Wings of a Dove" was featured in the movie Tender Mercies starring Robert Duvall. In 1987, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) awarded Ferguson with the "million air" plays for the "Wings of a Dove."
Xenosmilus is an extinct genus of homotherin machairodontine that was discovered in Florida in 2001. It has one species, Xenosmilus hodsonae.
Megantereon is an extinct genus of prehistoric machairodontine saber-toothed cat that lived in North America, Eurasia, and Africa. It is closely related to and possibly the ancestor of Smilodon.
Cueva del Milodón Natural Monument is a Natural Monument located in the Chilean Patagonia, 24 km (15 mi) northwest of Puerto Natales and 270 km (168 mi) north of Punta Arenas.
Devil's Lair is a single-chamber cave with a floor area of around 200 m2 (2,200 sq ft) that formed in a Quaternary dune limestone of the Leeuwin–Naturaliste Ridge, 5 km (3.1 mi) from the modern coastline of Western Australia. The stratigraphic sequence in the cave floor deposit consists of 660 cm (260 in) of sandy sediments, with more than 100 distinct layers, intercalated with flowstone and other indurated deposits. Excavations have been made in several areas of the cave floor. Since 1973, excavations have been concentrated in the middle of the cave, where 10 trenches have been dug. Archaeological evidence for intermittent human occupation extends down about 350 cm (140 in) to layer 30, with hearths, bone, and stone artefacts found throughout. The site provides evidence of human habitation of Southwest Australia 40,000 years before the present day.
Melbourne Bone Bed is a paleontological site located at Crane Creek in Melbourne, in the U.S. state of Florida. This site contains fossils from the Late Pleistocene period 20,000 to 10,000 years before the present. The fossils include extinct animals such as varieties of camels, dire wolves, Florida cave bears, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant bison, giant ground sloths, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and tapirs.
Parc Cwm long cairn, also known as Parc le Breos burial chamber, is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb, identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow. The cromlech, a megalithic burial chamber, was built around 5850 years before present (BP), during the early Neolithic. It is about seven 1⁄2 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula.
The Port Kennedy Bone Cave is a limestone cave in the Port Kennedy section of Valley Forge National Historical Park, Pennsylvania, USA. The Bone Cave "contained one of the most important middle Pleistocene fossil deposits in North America".
The First American Cave is an archaeological and paleontological site in downtown Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee. The site was initially recognized in 1971 during construction of the foundations for the First American National Bank building at 315 Deaderick Street, when workers noticed a collection of bones being unearthed within a pocket of dirt approximately 30 feet below ground surface. Excavations were halted and both the Vanderbilt University Department of Anthropology and the Southeastern Indian Antiquities Survey were notified of the find. It was subsequently determined that the bones included those of humans, as well as a number of animal species, including a saber-tooth cat. The dirt pocket from which the bones had been disinterred was in fact a filled in cave, most of which had been destroyed by construction. The Southeastern Indian Antiquities Survey was given permission to excavate within the remaining portion of the cave with the assistance of Vanderbilt University students.
The Coats–Hines–Litchy site is a paleontological site located in Williamson County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The site was formerly believed to be archaeological, and identified as one of only a very few locations in Eastern North America containing evidence of Paleoindian hunting of late Pleistocene proboscideans. Excavations at the site have yielded portions of four mastodon skeletons, including portions of one previously described as being in direct association with Paleoindian stone tools. The results of excavations have been published in Tennessee Conservationist, and the scholarly journals Current Research in the Pleistocene, Tennessee Archaeology, and Quaternary Science Reviews. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 2011.
The Conard Fissure is a geologic feature in Northern Arkansas where a deposit of Pleistocene fossils was discovered in 1903. Several specimens from saber-toothed cats were found there among other species.