One Montgomery Tower vs 101 California Street Building

Comparing the One Montgomery Tower and the 101 California Street Building is interesting because they both stand in San Francisco, CA, and were completed in the same year, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The 101 California Street Building is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 600ft (183m) with 48 floors above ground, while the One Montgomery Tower reaches 499ft (152m) with 38 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the One Montgomery Tower and the 101 California Street Building were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Postmodernism style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Johnson/Burgee Architects followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

Both the One Montgomery Tower and the 101 California Street Building were designed to serve as commercial towers, and that has remained their main use since their completion, serving similar roles in the urban fabric.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.