WoodmenLife Tower

The WoodmenLife Tower is an International Style skyscraper designed by Leo A Daly, and built between 1966 and 1969 in Omaha, NE.

Its precise street address is 1700 Farnam Street, Omaha, NE. You can also find it on the map here.

A distinctive feature of the tower is its LED lighting system, capable of displaying up to 16 million colors, illuminating the sky to celebrate special events and festivities..

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 2011 and 2014.

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 WoodmenLife Tower a reality:

• Kiewit Construction Company as the Main Contractor
• Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society as the Main Developer

The WoodmenLife Tower can be categorized as an International Style building.

The WoodmenLife Tower was completed in 1969. By 1969 the International Style movement had already left its early days behind and could be considered a mature movement, which does not mean it was loved and accepted by everyone, on the contrary. The International Style was accepted by the architecture community way before it was by the general public, and it is therefore likely that the WoodmenLife Tower was not well received by everyone at the time.

The WoodmenLife Tower uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features precast stone, running along the facades and creating distinct straight lines with minimal ornamentation. Dark glass panels with recessed metal spandrels contrast with the light-colored stone columns.

The tower sits on a five-level podium with a much larger footprint than the tower itself. This podium is clad with veined marble slabs in light tones along with small embedded dark glass windows.