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You know the building, even if you don’t know its name. It’s a neon silhouette that juts from the downtown skyline like a radioactive thumb. My 3-year-old calls it The Pickle, because that’s kind of what it looks like, but its official name is the Bank of America Tower. Since it was built in 1985, it has stood as the tallest building in Dallas.
The Dallas Morning News‘ Steve Brown brings word today that the 72-story tower is in the beginning stages of a major multimillion dollar renovation. There’s going to be a new entry, an updated lobby area and a remodeled retail court.
Now for the bigger news: “The project will replace the building’s signature green argon exterior lighting with a modern LED system,” Brown writes. The LED tubes will be sort of like what they have at the Omni.
In a companion piece, Brown gives a thumbnail history of the building and, more important, the neon.
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[T]o make sure that the tower wasn’t missed at night, the building was outlined with almost two miles of green argon-filled lighting. (The developers considered both blue and red light tubes before picking green because the color was visible from farther away.)Those light bulbs were trouble from the very start. Within weeks of the grand opening clumsy window washers had broken about 15 feet of them.
And Dallas’ hail storms and high winds have played havoc with the system over the years.
There’s very little hint of what the new lights will mean for Dallas’ skyline. Will they be kept the same shade of green? Or will they serve as a changing, particolored canvas, much like the Omni? Whatever the decision, the Morning News‘ new architecture critic is not impressed.
