User:Dabedouin58/Tour Bretagne

The Tour Bretagne (Tower of Brittany in English), opened November 18th, 1976 at 5:00pm, is an office building situated in the business district of Nantes near a main thoroughfare, Cours de 50-Otages. With a height of 472 feet (144 meters), it dominates the skyline of Nantes and is the third tallest building outside of Paris. It was conceived of by the mayor of Nantes at the time, André Morice, and realized by French architect Claude Devorsine.

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The part of town on which the tower now stands, once called "Marchix" had been considered dirty and dangerous before World War II. The are was heavily damaged by the American bombing during the war. The construction of two important buildings along Cours 50-Otages, the Treasury General and Social Security building as well as a post office, inspired officials to build a grand tower nearby.

Tour Bretagne was meant to represent the economic power of the city and to display it to the world. In 1966, with the encouragement of the people of Nantes, a group called SELA (Société d'Equipement de Loire Atlantique)was put in charge of developing the project. SELA asked Claude Devorsine, a today forgotten architect, and Marcel André, an engineering advisor, to bring the project to reality. In 1968, the plan was to construct a six-story parking garage at the base of the tower, complete with a gas station, which the cars could access via an exterior ramp. The next three levels were to be a vast commercial center with space for 25 boutiques and a restaurant. The offices would occupy the rest of floors except for the top floor, which would house a restaurant that would give panoramic views of the surrounding area.

The work began September 30th, 1971 after a number of delays, mainly due to an unforeseen number of changes to the plans during construction. Finally, after five years of work, the tower was opened in 1976.

However, the tour was a failure; it remained mostly empty for a long time, in part due to the high rent. The restaurant on the 29th floor was closed due to technical problems and free visits to the observation deck were stopped after frequent suicides. Furthermore, no businesses opened at the base of the tower as had been initially envisioned. To utilize the 170,000 square feet (16,000 square meters) of office space, the city government decided to move its administrative offices to the tower.

The tower, which measures 472 feet tall, has eight elevators, seven escalators and a water tank on the roof that can hold 24,000 gallons. Due to the change in plans, the building now has seven levels of parking, three "ground floors", a "level zero" (which is situated 66 feet above street level)and 29 floors of offices topped by a few floors containing machinery. The Tax Bureau, Nantes Metrocenter, and the offices of the city Employment Bureau occupy three-quarters of the buildings floorspace. Nearly 800 people work in the tower each day. The tower is managed by a group of co-owners composed of mainly banks but also the city government.

The people of Nantes, after long lamenting the tower's rigid and monolithic presence, have begun to begrudgingly accept the tower 30 years after its completion. One can see the gradual acceptance of the tower as it has begun to appear on a number of post cards, once thought completely unimaginable, and is now mentioned in the literature distributed by the office of tourism.