The Great American Tower at Queen City Square, is a 41-story,

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

which opened in January 2011. The tower was built by

Western & Southern Financial Group Western & Southern Financial Group, also commonly referred to as Western & Southern, is a Cincinnati, Ohio-based diversified family of financial services companies with $111.6 billion in assets owned and managed as of December 2021. As of 2022, it ...

at a cost of $322 million including $65 million of taxpayer-funded subsidies. Construction on the tower had begun in July 2008. Half the building is occupied by the headquarters of the Great American Insurance Company. It is currently the third tallest building in the state of Ohio, and the tallest outside of

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Background

Western & Southern floated the idea of constructing a tower for twenty years following the last construction boom in

Downtown Cincinnati Downtown Cincinnati is the central business district of Cincinnati, Ohio, as well the economic and symbiotic center of the Cincinnati metropolitan area. It also contains a number of urban neighborhoods in the low land area between the Ohio ...

. In 2002 the project was revived. Plans called for a tower with over of office space. When the tower opened in 2011, it was , ending the

Carew Tower Carew Tower is a 49-story, Art Deco building completed in 1930 in the heart of downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, overlooking the Ohio River waterfront. The structure is the second-tallest building in the city, and it was added to the register of Nati ...

's 81-year reign as the tallest building in Cincinnati. While the Great American Tower is taller than the Carew Tower, the latter building's roof is taller than the roof of the Great American Tower. The building was reviewed and approved by the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority which determined whether its parameters conformed to the outline in the Cincinnati 2000 plan for downtown including a final approval by

Cincinnati City Council The Cincinnati City Council is the lawmaking body of Cincinnati, Ohio. The nine-member city council is elected at-large in a single election in which each voter chooses nine candidates from the field. The nine top vote-getters win seats on the cou ...

on May 30, 2014. Tenants in the building include American Financial Group, law firm Frost Brown Todd, law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymore and Pease and Western & Southern Financial Group. As of December 8, 2012, the tower itself is 90 percent leased. The majority of Western & Southern's space is located in the 303 Broadway portion of the complex.

Design

The building's architect,

Gyo Obata Gyo Obata (小圃暁, February 28, 1923 – March 8, 2022) was an American architect, the son of painter Chiura Obata and his wife, Haruko Obata, a floral designer. In 1955, he co-founded the global architectural firm HOK (formerly Hellmuth, O ...

, designed the building to include a top inspired by Diana, Princess of Wales's

tiara A tiara (from la, tiara, from grc, τιάρα) is a jeweled head ornament. Its origins date back to ancient Greece and Rome. In the late 18th century, the tiara came into fashion in Europe as a prestigious piece of jewelry to be worn by women ...

. Gyo was flipping through books when he came upon a picture of Diana wearing a crown. "That's perfect. Here we have the crown of the building, and the nickname for the city is Queen City," said Joe Robertson of

Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum HOK, formerly Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum and legally HOK Group, Inc., is an American design, architecture, engineering, and urban planning firm, founded in 1955. As of 2018, HOK is the largest U.S.-based architecture-engineering f ...

remarking to Gyo when he first saw the picture. The building is constructed of glass and aluminum. The ground floor lobby interiors were designed by

FRCH Design Worldwide FRCH Design Worldwide (currently FRCH Nelson) is an American architectural and design firm headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio with regional offices in Los Angeles and New York City. Founded in 1968, it provided architectural, interior design, grap ...

. It has met with approval from Sue Ann Painter, author of ''Architecture in Cincinnati'' (

Ohio University Press Ohio University Press (OUP), founded in 1947, is the oldest and largest scholarly press in the state of Ohio. It is a department of Ohio University that publishes under its own name and the imprint Swallow Press. History The press publishes ap ...

, 2006), who believes the skyscraper's headdress recalls the iconic

Chrysler Building The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper on the East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. At , it is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel fra ...

. She says that the building is somewhat conservative, but pays homage to the other skyscrapers in Cincinnati. Jay Chatterjee, a former dean of the

University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning The University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, commonly referred to as DAAP, is a college of the University of Cincinnati. Located in the university's main campus in Cincinnati, Ohio, DAAP is consistently ranked ...

says that the design is similar to buildings constructed in the United States during the 1980s, that it does not break any new ground at all.

References

External links

Queen City Square
at Building Cincinnati
Queen City Square
at UrbanUp {{Buildings in Cincinnati timeline Office buildings completed in 2011 Skyscraper office buildings in Cincinnati Insurance company headquarters in the United States Postmodern architecture in the United States 2011 establishments in Ohio Gyo Obata buildings