Evolution of the Downtown Austin Skyline

Watch the rise of the Downtown Austin skyline, starting with the great 1888 Capitol building.
Read more: https://www.commercialcafe.com/blog/d...

Check out the building trivia below:
1. Texas State Capitol
Year built: 1888
Opened as the seventh largest building in the world, and still rising 14 feet higher than the National Capitol in Washington D.C.

2. Westgate Tower
Year built: 1967
Construction of Austin’s first high-rise faced resounding opposition because it would block views of the precious state Capitol from the West.

3. Chase Bank Tower
Year built: 1974
The tower, nicknamed "Golden Mirror," was originally covered in 3,600 inch-thick insulated reflective glass panes, which contained a small amount of gold alloy.

4. Bank of America Center
Year built: 1975
The shorter and stockier sibling of Houston’s Pennzoil Place: designed and built by the same team, sheathed in the same curtain wall glass--left over from Pennzoil Place construction.

5. Moody Bank Tower
Year built: 1981
The conference room is entered through the bank’s original vault door, built in 1875 in Pennsylvania and weighing more than 40,000 pounds, and houses a 12-foot-long table made from a 211-year-old fallen pecan tree.

6. Austin Center
Year built: 1986
The land on which the tower was built once held the home of Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second President of the Republic of Texas.

7. Frost Bank Tower
Year built: 2004
Reportedly one of only two buildings in the world with blue low-e glass skin, the other being the Reuters Building in New York City, which opened in 2001.

8. The Austonian
Year built: 2010
Austin's tallest building for eight years, surpassed by the still-in-construction "Jenga Tower" in May 2018

9. Colorado Tower
Year built: 2015
Upon completion, it was downtown Austin's first Class A office high-rise to be built in nearly a decade, after the Frost Bank Tower.

10. Westin Hotel
Year built: 2015
Home to the sweetest venue in Texas—a life-size gingerbread dining room that is built each December and rented to dining parties for a noble cause, with partial proceeds going towards combatting homelessness.

11. 500 West Second Street
Year built: 2017
Tenant build-out for Google cost an estimated $30M. Amenities include a stationary food truck that was hoisted up to the 28th floor, and a dog park on the 29th floor. Google's several cafeterias serve tacos DAILY.

12. Aloft Austin Downtown
Year built: 2017
The dog-friendly hotel offers quirky perks such as cowboy boot rental, and is the first in the world to have Chive TV, for the latest in viral videos.