Frost Bank Tower

Beginning in 1998, a joint venture composed of Civitas Investments, Highgate Holdings, and T. Stacy & Associates (collectively Block 42 Congress Partners) consolidated tracts of land at the building site on the intersection of 4th Street and Congress Avenue. Development of the site was complicated by the lease on the museum and municipal limits on building heights to preserve views of the Texas State Capitol. Block 42 Congress Partners acquired all of the land required for the project by August 1999, While the initial design for the building from Block 42 Congress Partners called for a tall building with 27 floors, the Cousins Properties design called for a tall office building with 33 floors, over of space, and a plaza. The building was to be the first new high rise on Congress Avenue in two decades. Initial clearing and demolition of the preexisting buildings on the site began in November 2001. Work on the project continued despite an ongoing recession, rising office vacancy rates in Downtown Austin, and a downgrade of Cousins Properties's stock rating by Merrill Lynch in response to the project's announcement. at the time, the building was the tallest in the U.S. to begin construction after the September 11 attacks. The building's retail space was fully leased in April 2003 with the addition of a McCormick & Schmick's restaurant. Frost Bank Tower topped out on May 28, 2003, including the final concrete pour and the hoisting of a cedar tree onto the top of the building as part of the topping out ceremony. It became the tallest building in Austin, Texas, and the fourth tallest building outside of Dallas and Houston, Texas, (excluding the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio). The crown atop the building was ceremonially illuminated for the first time on the night of January 21, 2004. Over 700 people attended the event, including Turan Duda, the skyscraper's lead architect. After Austin's skyscraper construction boom, which began in 2007, Frost Bank Tower was soon surpassed in height by the 360 Condominiums at in 2008. As of March 2011, it is the 54th tallest building in Texas. Currently, there are many notable tenants in the building, including Frost Bank, Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, PIMCO, UTIMCO, and Heritage Title Co. ==Architecture==

Designed by Duda/Paine Architects, LLP with HKS, Inc. as the Architect of Record, the Frost Bank Tower is considered one of the most recognizable buildings in Austin. The building starts with a rectangular shape on the ground that eventually becomes a square point in the crown. The base of the building is expressed in honed finish limestone while the main superstructure of the building is a blue low-e glass skin, which is a thicker type of glass, that covers the entire tower. The Frost Bank Tower is one of only two places in the world with blue low-e glass skin, the other being the Reuters Building in New York City, which was the earlier structure. More than 200,000 sq ft (60,960 sq m) of glass was used for the facade of the building alone and 45,000 sq ft (13,716 sq m) of glass was used in the crown. Austin American-Statesman columnist John Kelso compared the building's crown to an enormous set of nose hair trimmers. Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, a Statesman art critic, opined that the "jagged form of the crown looks more like a riff on the post-modern ornamentation of the 1980s than any kind of newly inspired form." The newspaper also said that the "owl face of the Frost Bank Tower" helps keep Austin "characteristically weird". Amenities The Frost Bank Tower contains a wide variety of amenities. Such amenities in the building include conference facilities, building concierge, 24-hour cardkey access, fully equipped fitness center, state-of-the-art telecommunication systems, tenant controlled HVAC, upscale restaurants, deli/carry-out restaurants, a coffee shop, and a dry-cleaner. Following the builders tradition, a tin Christian cross was embedded into the concrete of each floor during construction, with the last being added on May 27, 2003. The idea came from a story of an immigrant who worked on construction during the 1940s in New York City. Also, a cedar tree was hoisted to the top of the mechanical penthouse during the topping out ceremony. ==Position in Austin's skyline==

At the time of its construction in 2004, the Frost Bank Tower was the tallest building in Austin. In 2025 it fell to the 15th tallest completed building. The building covers most of its block, which is located near the center of downtown at 4th Street and Congress Avenue. When it was completed, along with its location in the skyline, matched with its height, excited Austinites and was known as a centerpiece to the skyline. ==Gallery==

File:FrostBankTowerLobbYAustinTX.JPG|Lobby of the tower Image:FrostTowerAerial.jpg|Aerial view of Frost Tower from Image:Frostbanktower 5th-guadalupe.jpg|Street view from the corner of 5th Street and Guadalupe Avenue Image:Frostbanktoweraustintx.jpg|Street view from Congress Avenue ==See also==