First National Bank Tower

The First National Bank Tower is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed between 1997 and 1998 by Leo A. Daly, and built between 1999 and 2002 in Omaha, NE.

First National Bank Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The First National Bank Tower is also known, or has been known as, One First National Center, or The Tower at First National Center.

Its precise street address is 1601 Dodge Street, Omaha, NE. You can also find it on the map here.

The First National Bank Tower has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 2002. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• IES Illumination Award of Merit in 2016
• Engineering Excellence Awards-Building Technology Systems in 2024
• Outstanding Achievement in Design Professional Project Award in 2024
• Emporis Skyscraper Award in 2002

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 2015 and 2023.

Leo A. Daly was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the First National Bank Tower a reality:

• Kiewit Corporation as the Main Contractor
• Alvine Engineering in charge of MEP Engineering

The First National Bank Tower can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The First National Bank Tower was designed in 1997. By 1997 the Postmodernism movement was experiencing a transition. Critics argued that Postmodernism, initially a rebellious and innovative style, had become formulaic and commercialized, and so the trend started moving away from blending historical styles, irony, and playful ornamentation, and begun to give way to emerging architectural trends concerned with more present matters such as technology, ecology or sustainability.

The First National Bank Tower uses a framed tube-in-tube structure , with steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A framed tube-in-tube structure uses a central core, known as inner tube, which usually holds stairs, lifts and installations, and a perimeter of columns around it, which form the exterior tube. The interior tube is tipically more massive (often made of reinforced concrete), and the exterior tube is "lighter" (made of steel or concrete columns). Both tubes are conencted via horizontal elements which make up the floors and also transmit any horizontal froces from the facade to the core.

The facade of the building is load bearing. This is a direct consequence of the integration of the exterior "tube" into the facade, something which most framed tube-in-tube buildings do in order to liberate the interior space from structural elements and achieve a more flexible interior.

So the facade of the builing is techinically load-bearing, yes, however, in between the load-bearing colums we find a curtain-wall type of facade, which by itself would not be cosnidered load-bearing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a modular curtain wall set between stone-clad vertical piers, most of which correspond to the perimeter structural steel pillars.

The tower sits on a robust six-level stone-clad base, above which it rises with a conical shape in the center, flanked by curved volumes and setbacks.