Wachovia Center (Winston-Salem)

The Wachovia Center is a 460 feet (140 m), 34 floor office skyscraper in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. It is the tallest building in the Piedmont Triad region and was the tallest in the Carolinas outside of Charlotte until the RBC Plaza was completed in Raleigh. The building served as the corporate headquarters of the Wachovia from 1995, the year of the tower's construction, to 2001, the year the corporation merged with First Union and moved its headquarters to Charlotte. Wachovia sold the building to American Financial Real Estate Trust after the merger, but the financial company still leases space in it. Prior to the tower's construction, the then tallest building in the city, the Wachovia Building (now Winston Tower), housed Wachovia's corporate headquarters.

The building was designed by world-renown architect César Pelli and features Moravian architectural themes, for which Winston-Salem is famous; notable aspects include the Moravian arch, which was used in the dome's design, and the Moravian star, which was used on the lobby's mosaics. He said it reembled a rose bud about to bloom. It is sheathed in Olympia white granite and is the only granite domed skyscraper in the world. The granite comes from a single quarry in Sardinia, Italy. The dome rises 59 feet and houses mechanical equipment. The gardens around the site were designed by Cesar Pelli's wife Diana Balmori, a landscape architect.

References