Gulf Tower

The Gulf Tower is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, and built between 1930 and 1932, for a reported $10.1 million dollars, in Pittsburgh, PA.

Gulf 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 building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Gulf Oil Building between 1932 and 1984.
• Gulf Tower from 1984 until this day.

Its precise street address is 707 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2003 and 2004.

Trowbridge & Livingston was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about Edward Mellon.

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 Gulf Tower a reality:

• McClintic-Marshall Construction Company in charge of Structural Engineering
• Mellon-Stuart as the Main Contractor
• Andrew W. Mellon as the Main Developer

The Gulf Tower can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Gulf Tower was completed in 1932, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The Gulf Tower uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete 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 is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a main entrance with two bronze-framed revolving doors surrounded by veined and sculpted pink granite. A clock crowns the granite frame of the entrance, and above it, a large double-height glass window that goes all the way up to the top of the large angular arch that protects the entrance, which is made of ornate stone.

The six top floors are designed with a step pyramid modeled after the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. This stepped pyramid also served an interesting feature, which was to broadcast the weather forecasts through a combination of different colors, similar to how the Wisconsin Gas Light Building also kept the people of Milwaukee informed about the future weather.

Other materials found at the Gulf Tower include, marble, found in the two-story lobby floors, fluted pilasters and intricate moldings, and brass, used in ornate detailings.