I’m currently working on a virtual tour of downtown but until I get that finished, I wanted to highlight some information on the 10 tallest buildings in downtown Des Moines. Interestingly enough the three tallest are on Grand Avenue, maybe that’s why they call it Grand Avenue.

801 Grand Address: 801 Grand Avenue Height: 192.0 m | Floors: 45 | Built 1991 Architectural Style: Post Modern Architects: Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum This is the tallest building in the state of Iowa. The bottom three floors of this tower are a retail mall connected to the downtown skywalk system. A great restaurant, 801 Steak & Chop is located here. A private restaurant, the Embassy Club resides on the top two floors of this building. The top half of the tower features a series of terraces and setbacks to visually decrease the building’s impact on the city skyline. 801 Grand Avenue is topped by eight-sided pyramid, which being clad with copper provides a unique sign of the tower. It was named one of the 50 Most Significant Iowa Buildings of the 20th Century by the Iowa chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Architecture | Skyline

So this evening I finally made it to one of the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tours. I did the North tour and had a great time learning about some of the buildings that I walk by everyday. The architectural details that my guide pointed out are things I have totally missed, but now will notice again and again on my walks through downtown. I never knew so many famous architects have designed buildings in our downtown and that we had so many different styles of architecture for a city our size. Now, I can’t wait till next summer when I can do the West, East and the new South tour. I would highly recommend these tours to anyone, it will help you experience downtown in a new and different way.

One of my favorite buildings, the Ruan Building, was completed in 1975, and stands 460 feet tall with 36 floors. It’s the second tallest building in Iowa. The outside is made out of Cor-Ten steel, which is an alloy designed to withstand the weather and require no maintenance (cleaning or painting). The building was supposed to weather to a rich red-brown color, but due to the cleaner atmosphere here, never quite made it to that color. I learned that the streaking on the building came from the window caulking that was used melting and running down the side of the building. A lot of people here thought the building was a big rust bucket, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I love the look of it.

From the Iowa Public Television site, I found this list of the 50 most significant Iowa Buildings
of the 20th Century as selected by the AIA-Iowa Chapter. The majority of these buildings are in downtown Des Moines. Dates listed here are completion dates.
* Designates building of the decade.
** Designates building of the century (which is also building of its decade.)

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Architecture | History | Skyline | Tours | Walking

One of my favorite hobbies is photography. I’m no Herb Ritz nor do I ever expect to be. I am just a guy with a digital camera who takes as many photos as he can. I tend to focus on architecture, signs and other random elements of life. I’m usually out every week taking photos of something downtown. I think our city is extremely photogenic, and the variety of photographs that I’ve come across on the internet, leads me to believe that’s a pretty common belief.  So I thought I would share with you some great links to some really outstanding Des Moines photography.

One of the best local photographers of city buildings and skylines is absolutedsm.com. I see their pictures all over the place, in advertisements, skywalk billboards and has reference shots in web postings. Here are a couple of links to my favorite galleries:

• Downtown Galleries
  
• Downtown Construction Projects
  

If you like aerial photography, www.urban-photos.com specializes in aerial photography of city skylines and of course Des Moines is one of the featured cities. Their Des Moines gallery has some truly outstanding images that could only be captured from a helicopter high above the city. I think these three are my favorites:

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Architecture | Art | Recognition | Skyline

It looks like over the last few weeks construction has really started up on the new Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield company headquarters building. As a downtown resident this brings hope and anticipation with new construction that continues to bring vitalization to our downtown, but the same time begs the question what’s going to happen to all the current leased spaces that these companies occupied? With Wellmark moving out of the Ruan and Davis Brown Law Firm moving out of the Financial Center, who will move to occupy those large spaces?

Wellmark’s new five-story, 550,000 square feet building, on 6.5 acres will be a huge addition to downtown. The building beautiful architecture will look awesome sitting across from Western Gateway Park the new Pappajohn Sculpture Garden. Here’s a video that shows off the beautiful architecture of the building:

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Architecture | Gateway West | Insurance | Recognition | Tours

Summer is almost over and I’m mad at myself for never finding the time to do the Architecture @ Hand Walking Tour. There’s only one more date left for this year, Thursday September 4th. I’m going try my best not to miss it. The Iowa Architectural Foundation offers these walking tours as a unique approach to getting to know downtown Des Moines by learning fun facts about both old and new downtown buildings.

The walking tours are led by local architects and there are three different tours to choose from: North, West and the East Village tour. The tours begin at 5:30pm and Nollen Plaza (corner of 3rd and Locust, across from the Civic Center). The tours are typical 90 minutes long and they recommend everyone to wear comfortable walking shoes. There is a $10 per person suggested donation to benefit the educational programs of the Iowa Architectural Foundation. The foundation’s goal is promote the awareness of the contribution of architecture and community design to the quality of life in Iowa since 1989.

In doing some research for this post, I found a link for some great old postcard shots of Des Moines.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Architecture | History | Skyline | Tours | Walking