Wells Fargo Tower

The Wells Fargo Tower is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Paul Rudolph, in association with 3D/International, and built between 1978 and 1982 in Fort Worth, TX.

Wells Fargo 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 Wells Fargo Tower is also known, or has been known as, City Center I, or Chase Texas Tower.

Its precise street address is 201 Main Street, Fort Worth, TX. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2011 the Wells Fargo Tower was awarded with the 25 Year Honor Award.

Together with the Bank of America Tower the Wells Fargo Tower completes what's known as the City Center Tower Complex. Even though each tower sits on a different block, they were both designed as one joint project and are connected by two skywalk bridges to the parking building, which they share and takes up another two blocks of the city grid.

Paul Rudolph was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with 3D/International.

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 Wells Fargo Tower a reality:

• CBM Engineers, Inc., and Joseph Colaco in charge of Structural Engineering
• Linbeck Construction Company as the Main Contractor
• Calvin Kort as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Bass Brothers Enterprises, and City Center Incorporated as the Main Developer
• 3D/International in charge of MEP Engineering
• Halbach-Dietz Architects in charge of Interior Design

The Wells Fargo Tower can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The Wells Fargo Tower was completed in 1982. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The Wells Fargo Tower was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The Wells Fargo 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 a continuous, dark-tinted glass curtain wall. At street level several of the paired structural columns are exposed up to several heights, while at the top, each arm of the pinwheel floorplan stops at different levels, breaking the uniformity of the volume.