User:Towerliferules/sandbox

= Tower Life Building =

The Smith-Young Tower (known later on as the Transit Tower from 1943-1990 and now known officially as the Tower Life Building since 1990) is a 31-story building and a historical landmark in Downtown San Antonio, Texas. It is located directly near the San Antonio Riverwalk and former Plaza Hotel, which is now known as the Granada Apartments since 1966.

Designed in the Late Gothic Revival Style by local architectural firm Ayres & Ayres, Atlee Bernard Myles & Robert M. Ayres, the Smith-Young Tower contains lots of neo-gothic brick and a Ludowici green terra-cotta capped tower, even complete with numerous amounts gargoyles and grotesques all over the exterior. The overall shape of the tower is uniquely eight-sided, and has remained the tallest building in the United States with that many sides since its completion. As of 2023, the former Smith-Young Tower is currently the 5th tallest habitable structure and 4th tallest building in San Antonio.

Exterior
The exterior walls are brick with terracotta and black granite ornamentation, and the interior embellishments, particularly in the first floor lobby, also reflect Late Gothic Revival design. The Smith-Young Tower is one block east of the Bexar County Courthouse at the southernmost edge of San Antonio's central business district. It is bounded by Villita Street to the south, St.Mary's Street to the west, the San Antonio River to the north, and an adjoining parking garage to the east, while the building faces southwest onto the intersection of Villita and St.Mary's streets.

The building, bearing masterful treatment of form, scale and ornamentation, meets Criterion C in the area of Architecture as one of the best illustrations of Late Gothic Revival commercial design in the state and as the work of local master architects Atlee B. and Robert M. Ayres.

The building's form is that of a 3-part vertical block, as its 6-story base structure is of reinforced concrete and has an unusual 4-sided plan with no right angles. The street level of the base is heavily decorated,and above the 6-foot base course of black granite, the first 2-stories are faced with terra cotta, and the remaining upper stories are tan brick. The main southwest entrance has two pairs of double doors and an immense, segmentally arched transom bears massive bronze grills. The west and north elevations have segmentally arched plate glass display windows with copper ornamented transom bars and terra cotta sills on the 1st level. The south elevation also has segmentally arched plate glass windows, but they are set in bronze. Both the south and west elevations have copper canopies. On the west, north, and east elevations, 2nd level windows are grouped in threes and are heavily ornamented with terra cotta tracery. On The upper four levels of the base these elevations have aluminum sash windows, also grouped in threes, which replaced the original steel sash windows in 1961. The east elevation is adjoined to a parking garage and bears no fenestration or ornamentation. The base is set off from the shaft at the 6th floor with terracotta tracery that acts as a parapet. The base beyond the tower support has a flat roof.

The 14-story midsection shaft is a steel frame octagonal plan, and all eight sides of the shaft echo the rhythm of fenestration with aluminum sash windows grouped in threes separated by vertical framing members. Protected with a balustrade of terra cotta tracery, an observation deck at the 7th floor faces north and has red promenade tile flooring. Terra cotta decorates the 19th and 20th floors, while terra cotta tracery that acts as a parapet separates the shaft from the set-back "capital."

The 11-story "capital" isa series of three steel frame octagons that recess at the 20th, 25th, and 29th floors. Each section repeats the established fenestration pattern. Terra cotta embellishes the 26th and 29th floors with gargoyles accenting each of the eight corners, and the conical roof is covered with green clay tile and has gable dormers. Above the roof is square copper-covered lantern and a large antenna, and until 1947, an 80-foot flag pole had been perched atop the lantern, which since 2010, has been restored and placed back atop the lantern.

Interior lobby
The interior public spaces of the Smith-Young Tower are elaborately decorated with Gothic Revival detailing. The main lobby, accessed through the southwest-facing entrance, has marble flooring, marble wainscoting, and a 2- story-tall vaulted ceiling of gold-finished and terra cotta panels with Gothic characteristics. Six elevators in the lobby and three along the north wall feature cast bronze doors with green-colored Tiffany glass, and woodwork in the lobby is of Circassian walnut.

Planning and background
In 1923 the Smith Brothers Properties Company was organized in San Antonio to develop Bowen's Island, a large conceptual development that would consist of many skyscrapers and many other upscale properties. Literature and correspondence the company produced suggest that the developers envisioned Bowen's Island as a multiple use complex similar to Rockefeller Center in New York, a project that was also in the conceptual stage. To that end the company constructed several buildings including the Ormsby Chevrolet Company Showroom, Allen Auto Electric Company and the Montgomery Ward & Company Department Store, all three of which have since been demolished, two garages, A.B. Frank Company Wholesale and Drygoods Building, now the City Public Service Building, the Plaza Hotel and Garage, now the Granada Apartments, and the Federal Reserve Bank Building, now the Mexican Consulate.

Construction and completion
Architects Atlee B. Ayres & Robert M. Ayres had already designed all of the major buildings the Smith Brothers Properties Company had erected on Bowen's Island. Again Smith Brothers turned to San Antonio's most prominent architectural firm to design a monumental tower of noble scale and form. Preliminary drawings were underway by December of 1927, with 29-year-old Robert Ayres serving as chief designer. Joseph Dodge, a draftsman with the architects' office, was also assigned to the project and worked especially close with the general contractors, McKenzie Construction Company, a firm that had worked on other Bowen's Island buildings as well as the Olmos Dam on the San Antonio River north of the city.

The building opened in June of 1929 and was fittingly named the Smith-Young Tower, albeit during the height of the financial downtown following the Wall Street Crash, which had ultimately led to the development ultimately being scrapped after the Smith-Young Tower was completed, serving as a reminder of the exuberant, optimistic expectations that characterized urban landscapes prior to the Great Depression. Regardless, when the building was completed, it officially surpassed the Milam Building, becoming San Antonio’s tallest building and structure, and notably, its lowest 6-levels contained the city’s first Sears, Roebuck & Co. store when it first opened. The store was open for exactly 10 years, boasting large display windows along St. Mary's and Villita streets, ornamental doorways and monumental fronts offered sensational distraction and enticed the attention of consumers. Meanwhile, the upper stories were rented as office space, housing prominent local professionals and businesses including attorney J.H. Groce, architects Ralph Cameron, George Willis, Ayres and Ayres, and the Humble Oil Company. To best accommodate tenants the building had numerous "modern" amenities like nine Otis elevators, steel sash windows, ceiling fans, water fountains and bathrooms on each floor, ice water connections in each office, a penthouse at the 7th floor, a ladies' lounge at the 18th floor, an underground pneumatic tube system that linked to the Bexar County Courthouse, and a tunnel connecting to the adjacent Plaza Hotel.

20th Century
Sometime in the 1940s the building was renamed to the Transit Tower for the San Antonio Transit Company, which the Smith Brothers purchased in 1943, with the original 80-foot flagpole being removed by 1947, and a few years later, in 1953, the tall television transmission antenna tower was added to the top of the lantern, officially replacing the original flagpole. Sometime in 1958, Betty Fox jumped rope, danced, and did splits and shoulder lifts on a narrow ledge outside the 22nd floor of the Transit Tower in a campaign to raise money for San Antonio's hospital building fund.

In April of 1968, for the first time in its history, the Transit Tower was surpassed as the tallest structure in San Antonio when the Tower of the Americas was completed for HemisFair ‘68, but continued to remain the tallest building in the city until 1988, when the 38-floor Marriott Rivercenter hotel was completed, and today, the hotel has remained the tallest in the city.

Sometime in 1990, the Tower Life Insurance Company acquired the Transit Tower, officially renaming it again, this time, to the Tower Life Building. In November of 1991, the Towner Life Building was rightfully listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to its architecture characteristics and place in San Antonio’s history of skyscrapers.

21st Century
Eventually, around 2009, Tower Life devised plans to restore the top of the tower and its lantern to its former glory. The restorations officially began in September of that year, involving the complete removal of the antenna that had been placed there by the Transit Company, and rebuilding the lantern’s original roof. Soon, a flagpole similar to the one that it was first completed with was hoisted up to the lantern, officially restoring the building to its original exterior appearance by 2010.

In May of 2022 San Antonio businessman Red McCombs and real estate investors Jon Wiegand and Ed Cross officially acquired the Tower Life Building, and later that August, they announced their plans to convert much of the vacant office space into mixed-use apartments and housing, many of which will be affordable as part of a deal struck with Bexar County that December. The investment group plans to revive life within the building with 234 new residences and a restaurant on the ground level, with the conversion set to begin sometime in 2024, with the first apartments set to go on the market by 2026.

Appearances in media
The Smith-Young tower has occasionally been featured or appeared in various forms of media, one of the most notable being in the 1984 film, Cloak & Dagger, where it is featured in the opening panning scenes in the center of San Antonio.

The second most notable is in the History Channel what-if series, Life After People, where 50 years after people, repeated rains have spawned cycles of flooding along the San Antonio RiverWalk, softening the building’s foundations and making it sink. After the flooding, waterlogged foundations leave the buildings tilting at odd angles, including the Smith-Young Tower, as silt and sand inundate the area. Steven S. Ross calls it death by inches since it happens slowly and insidiously, and he continues that the river itself, although not flowing very fast, would flood repeatedly which brings a lot of silt and sand to cover part of the area causing the buildings to sink into it unevenly and settle. Eventually, the lean is too much for the Smith-Young Tower as gravity takes over, which then collapses and falls into the river it once overlooked, toward the San Antonio RiverWalk on the ground.

= Timeline of the Singer Building’s site = The site and block which the Singer Building once occupied from its initial completion 1898 until its demolition from 1967-1969 has a comprehensive history of its own.

1850s
Sometime in the 1850s (Real estate developer Peter Gisley hires architect John W. Ritch to design a new building at 169-171 Broadway)

Sometime in the 1850s (Gisley makes a deal with local baker Bogert to allow him to gain ownership of building in 25 years after he initially refused to give away his old bakery)

Sometime in 1854 The six story structure known as the Gisley Building is completed at a cost of $60,000)

December of 1854 (Harbersher M.Wilson moves into the new structure and is one of the first tenants to do so)

April of 1855 (Wilson’s competitor Joseph Lee moves his store into the building)

May of 1855 (Dr. John Bull moves his office into the Gisley Building)

Sometime in 1859 (The offices of Butler, Hosford & Co. were moved into the building)

1870s
Sometime in 1870 (Quimby, Smith & Co. is one of several jewelers that move into the building)

Sometime in 1873 (E. Richmond of the Kentucky State Lottery holds his office in the Gisley Building and publishes a paper directing the winners of the cash prizes to the building)

April of 1873 (Peter Gisley dies before his lease on the property expires and his estate is forced to give up the building)

July of 1876 (The Gisley Building is decorated with small flags flying from each of the windows to celebrate the United States Centennial)

1880s
Sometime in 1889 (Miss Lamb leases Room No. 33 on the third floor for her typewriting school)

1890s
February of 1890 (A site and block at 151-153 Broadway is acquired by the Singer Manufacturing Company for a new headquarters)

Early 1897 (Ernest Flagg is hired for the design of the new Singer Building and he subsequently files the plans)

June of 1897 (Construction of the Singer Building officially begins with the first excavations)

June of 1897 (A water main bursts and flood the lot during the Singer Building’s excavations)

December of 1897 (A few additional buildings at 85-89 Broadway are acquired by Frederick Bourne to build an annex to the Singer Building)

December of 1897 (Plans for the additional annex are filed by Flagg)

January of 1898 (The original Singer Building is officially completed as the company's new headquarters between Broadway and Liberty Street)

September of 1899 (The Singer Building’s annex is officially completed and is named the Bourne Building)

= Timeline of the Singer and City Investing Buildings =

1890s
February of 1890 (A site and block at 151-153 Broadway is acquired by the Singer Manufacturing Company for a new headquarters)

Early 1897 (Ernest Flagg is hired for the design of the new Singer Building and he subsequently files the plans)

June of 1897 (Construction of the Singer Building officially begins with the first excavations)

June of 1897 (A water main bursts and flood the lot during the Singer Building’s excavations)

December of 1897 (A few additional buildings at 85-89 Broadway are acquired by Frederick Bourne to build an annex to the Singer Building)

December of 1897 (Plans for the additional annex are filed by Flagg)

January of 1898 (The original Singer Building is officially completed as the company's new headquarters between Broadway and Liberty Street)

September of 1899 (The Singer Building’s annex is officially completed and is named the Bourne Building)

1900s
Sometime in 1900 (Both the Singer and Bourne Building’s are fully occupied)

Sometime in 1900 (An additional building between 155-157 Broadway is acquired by Bourne for use as an additional annex)

Sometime in 1902 (A house at 163 broadway is acquired by Bourne for use as an additional annex)

Sometime in 1903 (An additional building at 193 Liberty Street is acquired by Bourne for use as an additional annex)

Sometime in 1905 (The Singer Company  officially controls the entire block where the Singer Building is located)

Late 1905 (Flagg is hired to design plans for an westward annex to the Bourne Building)

Late 1905 (Plans for an expansion and increase to the Singer Building and Bourne Building’s floors is filed)

January of 1906 (Francis Kimball is hired for the design of the bulky City Investing Building)

January of 1906 (The City Investing Company acquires the Coal and Iron Exchange Building to gradually demolish it)

February of 1906 (Plans for a tall tower addition to the Singer Building designed by Flagg is unveiled by the Singer Company)

July of 1906 (Revised plans for the tower are filed to make it more wind-resistant)

August of 1906 (Contracts are awarded for the digging of the foundation before the plans were officially approved)

September of 1906 (Plans for the tower addition are officially approved and excavation would subsequently begin)

October of 1906 (The Coal and Iron Exchange Building is now completely demolished for the excavation of the new City Investing Building)

October of 1906 (The first steel shipments for the Singer Building’s anchorages finally arrive)

November of 1906 (Construction of the City Investing Building officially begins with the first excavations of the foundation)

Late 1906 (Plans for the Bourne Building’s westward annex and the Singer Building’s northward annex are filed)

January of 1907 (Excavations of the City Investing Building’s foundation is complete)

February of 1907 (The Singer Building annex’s foundation work is officially completed)

June of 1907 (The Singer Building is shored up and additional foundations are built)

June of 1907 (A temporary floor for the City Investing Building collapses and kills one construction worker)

June of 1907 (The mansard roof and top three floors of the Singer Building are taken apart to make way for four additional stories)

August of 1907 (The tower’s steel frame reaches 36-stories and surpasses the Washington Monument in height)

August of 1907 (Prince Wilhelm of Sweden visits the 29th-floor of the tower during the construction)

October of 1907 (The tower is finally topped out with the hoisting of the flagpole atop the unfinished lantern)

Late 1907 (Plans for the Singer Building’s northward annex are filed)

February of 1908 (A small fire occurs in the 40th-floor of the unfinished tower and becomes the highest fire in the world at the time)

April of 1908 (The City Investing Building is officially completed as the new headquarters of the City Investing Company)

April of 1908 (Tenants quickly start moving into the City Investing Building)

May of 1908 (The tower is officially completed and becomes known as the Singer Tower)

May of 1908 (The Singer Building instantly becomes a symbol and icon of Manhattan as a whole with the floodlit Singer Tower)

May of 1908 (The Singer Tower officially becomes the tallest habitable building in the world by surpassing the Philadelphia City Hall in height)

May of 1908 (A painter is brutally decapitated by one of the building’s elevators)

June of 1908 (The observation deck and balcony opens to the public)

June of 1908 (A plumber's assistant is crushed between an elevator cab and a shaft)

February of 1909 (The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower is completed in Midtown Manhattan and surpasses the Singer Building as the tallest habitable building in the world)

1910s
Sometime in 1911 (Aviator Harry Atwood flew around the Singer Tower in a publicity stunt)

February of 1915 (The City Investing Building is placed in a permanent shadow up to the 24th floor by the construction of the new Equitable Building nearby)

August of 1916 (Albert Goldman of Mutual Life Insurance commits suicide by jumping out from the Singer Building and striking the mansard roof at the 13th story before hitting the sidewalk)

December of 1919 (Grigori Benenson acquires the City Investing Building for $10 million in cash and it is renamed to the Benenson Building)

December of 1919 (The Benenson Building is estimated to be worth $7 million and even contains a $5.75 million mortgage held by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company)

1920s
July of 1920 (Benenson officially acquires the title to the building)

July of 1921 (The Singer Building’s steam plant is converted to burn oil as a fuel instead of coal and becomes the first office building in the city to do so)

July of 1921 (The Singer Company puts the Singer Building up for sale for $10 million but the sale never finalizes)

March of 1925 (A sub-basement vault inside the Singer Building was dug for the Chatham Phenix National Bank‘s use after a merger with Metropolitan Trust)

August of 1926 (Benenson himself receives a $9.5 million mortgage loan for the Benenson Building)

1930s
October of 1930 (Old wheelbarrow manufacturer Austin Adams Jr. jumps from the 24th story of the Singer Tower and dies on the 14th floor setback)

October of 1931 (The Benenson Building is put up for $10 million due to foreclosure proceedings during the Great Depression)

November of 1931 (Charles F. Noyes acquires the Benenson Building along with several other former properties of Benenson)

June of 1938 (The Benenson Building is auctioned off to satisfy the liens against the properties)

June of 1938 (The New York Trust Company acquires the Benenson Building for $5 million and renames it to its address of 165 Broadway)

November of 1939 (The observation deck is permanently closed to the public and never reopens)

November of 1939 (The Singer Tower’s copper ornamentation on the dome is restored)

1940s
March of 1941 (165 Broadway is renovated for $300,000 in order to upgrade many of its systems)

April of 1947 (The Singer Building and Tower’s architect Ernest Flagg passes away at age 90)

Sometime in 1947 (The original flagpole and roof cresting are completely removed)

Sometime in 1947 (The Singer Tower’s lantern is redesigned and the dome’s windows were redone to protrude outward)

December of 1947 (165 Broadway is acquired by N. K. Winston and George Gregory for $11 million alongside 99 Liberty Street)

April of 1949 (The building experiences a small electrical fire that forces the evacuation of the entire structure and injures one person)

1950s
Sometime in 1957 (Automatic elevators were installed in order to comply with modern building codes)

April of 1958 (The Singer Building is now only the 16th-tallest building in Manhattan by its 50th Anniversary)

Sometime in 1958 (The original revolving doors are replaced are replace with more standard doors)

1960s
November of 1961 (The Singer Company announces it will sell the Singer Building and move their offices to the RCA Building of the Rockefeller Center)

November of 1961 (The Singer Building is sold to Financial Place Inc.)

Sometime in 1962 (William Zeckendorf acquires the Singer Building and fails to convince the New York Stock Exchange to relocate there)

March of 1964 (United States Steel acquires the Singer Building with plans to demolish it along with the entire block to erect a new 50 or 54-story headquarters)

March of 1964 (United States Steel acquires 165 Broadway with plans to demolish it along with the entire block to erect a new 50 or 54-story headquarters)

Sometime from 1964-1967 (Preservationists and architectural magazines attempt to have the Singer Building preserved and designated as a New York City Landmark)

Sometime from 1964-1967 (The former City Investing Building receives little to no notice by preservationists and architectural magazines in contrast to the neighboring Singer Building)

August of 1967 (The Landmarks Preservation Commision doesn’t designate the Singer Building a landmark due to it needing a proper buyer in order for it to be well maintained and used)

September of 1967 (Demolition on the Singer Building and Singer Tower officially commences and scaffolding is gradually erected around the Singer Tower)

September of 1967 (The Singer Building’s original Liberty Street entrance has already been knocked down with minor dismantling work inside already beginning)

February of 1968 (Demolition on the former City Investing Building officially commences)

March of 1968 (Most of the Singer Tower has been destroyed and the lobby has been mostly torn up)

March of 1968 (A little over half of the City Investing Building has been destroyed)

February of 1969 (Demolition of the Singer Building is finally fully completed as the last scrap of steel is carted away)

February of 1969 (The Singer Building officially becomes the tallest building in the world to be destroyed and voluntarily demolished by surpassing the Morrison Hotel in height)

February of 1969 (Demolition of the City Investing Building is fully completed alongside the Singer Building)

February of 1969 (The City Investing Building officially becomes the third tallest building in the world to be destroyed and voluntarily demolished)