The epic story of Fountain Place, the rocket-shaped tower that is the city’s greatest skyscraper.
What is the most beautiful building on the Dallas skyline? There is only one plausible answer: Fountain Place, the sleek blue-green tower that shifts in appearance as you move around it. From one angle, it is a rocket ship. From another, a prism. At the right time of day and in the right light, it disappears altogether, its reflective surfaces dissolving into the sky.
As a developer who could marry high-end architecture with commercial success, Hines was an obvious model for the Criswells. “I really loved what they did at Pennzoil Place,” says Bill Criswell, who almost took a job with Hines at the beginning of his career. For Cobb, the pointed top solved the problem of giving the building distinction on the skyline, and without the kind of hokey architectural references that had become a standard affectation of postmodern design.
Michael Graves, a leading figure of the postmodern movement, led the opposition. “If it is possible for minimalism to be picturesque, you’ve done it,” he scoffed. “If you bend over backwards to make a place on the ground for everybody, then those bloody awful towers also ought at least to provide a place to have a drink or to have lunch or do something beyond looking out through the green-awful glass.
More troubling were the financial concerns. “Many real estate developers and leasing agents never expected the Fountain Place project to get off the ground,”reported when construction began in February 1984. Although the Criswells had secured an anchor tenant, finding others proved increasingly difficult in the softening Dallas real estate market. Even good news was bad news.
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