Cite Winter 1987 •> Citesurvey

The Commerce Tower

Joel Warren Barna

he Texas Commerce Tower at Texas Commerce Tower across the Southwest Life Insurance, dating from 2200 Ross Avenue in is a southern edge of downtown; and window 1964; the slightly too-imposing sculpture T 55-story, 1.2 million square-foot proportions that harmonize with the garden at the LTV Centre; the 1986 lower designed by Skidmore, Owings, adjacent St. Paul Tower. At ground level, Lincoln Plaza, with its grove of oaks; and and Merrill of and built by the there are even chunky concrete flag-pole the water gardens at Allied Bank Tower at Trammel 1 Crow Company. Begun in 1984 pylons that recall those at Dallas's City Fountain Place. Together these features and officially opened in September 1987 Hall, at the opposite end of downtown. make Ross Avenue, which forms one edge (a few weeks after Cadillac Fairview's of the emerging Dallas Arts District, the big, bland Momentum Place, designed by Along with these flag poles, the best and most humane downtown street in the state. John Burgee Architects with Philip most problematic features of the building Johnson), it probably will be the last are at ground level. In a l.5-acre plaza But the ground-level features of the Texas major building to go up in a Texas between Ross Avenue and the tower base, Commerce Tower, on a recent rainy downtown for some time. All the better, topiary gardens (with what will one day Monday, with the plaza and building all because Texas Commerce Tower, while be 12-foot-tall hedges) are carved by but unoccupied, seemed raw and strangely not entirely on target from top to bottom, paths and seating areas, and a grass lawn proportioned, the concrete elements is a remarkable building. slopes toward an II-foot-high, 50-foot- grossly overscaled, and the metal elements long water wall. At the southwestern a blunt paint-can blue-green. Habitation Start at the top: its sculpted glass-clad corner is a 17,000-square-foot domed and use should change that: it's a site with curves and its racy 74-by-27-foot keyhole. rotunda, planned for a restaurant. The a carnival atmosphere, and needs some None of the classical or nco-Gothic building's connections to other buildings, activity to work. through skyways and underground tunnels, Aperture at top references employed by other postmodernists here - SOM went straight are dramatized by curved exterior stair A prediction: in 10 years Texas Commerce for a more viscerally entertaining effect, ramps, to attract and stimulate foot traffic Tower will look dated, but then so does somewhere between sci-fi fantasy (like its (a basement-level subway station also has everything a half-generation away. People unsuccessful entry in the Southwest been contemplated). This landscaping used to chuckle at the excesses of the Neils Tower Competition in 1982) and the forms an important link in the chain of Esperson Building and 's Japanese Metabolist school of the 1960s. public spaces along Ross Avenue, University of St. Thomas campus. In 20 It is a riskier, but more successful, top including the sculpture garden of the years, however, people will point to Texas than the pyramid of glass adorning the Dallas Museum of Art, with its powerful Commerce Tower and say, "Thai was nearby LTV Centre, designed by SOM fountain wall; the welcoming oak grove at Dallas in the good old days." • for the same clients and completed in 1984. One wonders, though: Who is supposed to look through the void at the top? And at what?

The middle stretch of tower, between the top and the six-story, mahogany-colored granite base, finished precisely and soberly in rose-gray Salamandra granite and pinkish glass, is perhaps a trifle broad and boxy in front elevation, although the side elevations are pleasingly slim. The base and mid-tower section, with their SOM-signature precision, work well in balancing the vaudeville of the roof. And they incorporate a number of references to the context of the building that make it a little less idiosyncratic looking. These include columns set at a 45-degrcc angle to the • III! surface of the base, which, like the Illlllll angled vertical stripe of glass rising from llllft" base to top on the front and side IIIC elevations, recall the prismatic skin of the «U K LTV Centre; a concave glass facade IIIIII element above the entrance and rondels echoing features of The Crescent, facing

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Detail of entrance Texas Commerce Tower, Dallas. 1987. Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, architects