Reunion Tower is a

observation tower An observation tower is a structure used to view events from a long distance and to create a full 360 degree range of vision to conduct long distance observations. Observation towers are usually at least tall and are made from stone, iron, an ...

Dallas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

and one of the city's most recognizable landmarks. Located at 300 Reunion Boulevard in the Reunion district of

downtown Dallas Downtown Dallas is the central business district (CBD) of Dallas, Texas, United States, located in the geographic center of the city. It is the second-largest business district in the state of Texas. The area termed "Downtown" has traditionally ...

, the tower is part of the Hyatt Regency Hotel complex and is the city's 15th tallest building. A free-standing structure until the construction of an addition to the

Hyatt Regency Dallas The Hyatt Regency Dallas is a 28-story, 1,120-room hotel in the Reunion district of Dallas, Texas, United States The building is connected to Union Station and Reunion Tower, which is the city's landmark observation tower in downtown Dallas. T ...

in 1998, the tower was designed by architectural firm of Rochester's Xerox Tower, Welton Becket & Associates.

History

Reunion Tower, also known locally as "The Ball," was completed on February 2, 1978, along with the Hyatt Regency Dallas at Reunion, as part of an

urban redevelopment Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of bligh ...

project that also renovated the historic Union Station, which today services

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ...

Dallas Area Rapid Transit Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is a transit agency serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex of Texas. It operates buses, light rail, commuter rail, and high-occupancy vehicle lanes in Dallas and twelve of its suburbs. In , the system ha ...

, and the

Trinity Railway Express The Trinity Railway Express (TRE) is a commuter rail line in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It was established by an interlocal agreement between Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and Trinity Metro. Each transit authority owns a 50% stake in ...

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport , also known as DFW Airport, is the primary international airport serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and the North Texas Region in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the largest hub for American Ai ...

and

Fort Worth Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. Accord ...

. Henry C Beck Company was the tower's Prime contractor. Also see HCB Contractors and The Beck Group Reunion Tower marks 35 years as Dallas landmark https://www.woodbinedevelopment.com › reunion-tow... When it first opened, the tower included radio station KOAX-FM, now KRLD-FM 105.3 FM, once owned by

Westinghouse Broadcasting The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, also known as Group W, was the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It owned several radio and television stations across the United States and distributed television shows for syndicat ...

("Live twenty-four hours a day from five-hundred feet above the city"). Because it is not used as a

broadcast tower Radio masts and towers are typically tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. There are two main types: guyed and self-supporting structures. They are among the tallest human-made ...

, it is not listed in the FCC Database. Reunion Tower reopened its restaurant level on February 9, 2009, after it was closed for major renovations on November 16, 2007. The observation deck reopened October 5, 2013, just in time for the Tower's 35th anniversary. The tower is located about 1,000 feet from

Dealey Plaza Dealey Plaza is a city park in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas. It is sometimes called the "birthplace of Dallas". It was also the location of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963; 30 minutes after the shootin ...

and the site of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Architecture

The tower contains three floors with circular floor plans on top of four shafts of poured-in-place concrete. A central cylindrical shaft houses both stairs and mechanical equipment. Three rectangular shafts, featuring elevators, rise parallel to the central shaft. Each shaft's outfacing wall is made up of glass panels, providing tourists views of the city during the 68-second elevator ride to the top. Before renovations in 2008, the first level housed the observation deck, the second a

revolving restaurant A revolving restaurant or rotating restaurant is usually a tower restaurant eating space designed to rest atop a broad circular revolving platform that operates as a large turntable. The building remains stationary and the diners are carried on ...

called ''Antares'', and the third level a club called ''The Dome''. The top three floors are encased in an open-air sphere, which is a

geodesic dome A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The triangular elements of the dome are structurally rigid and distribute the structural stress throughout the structure, making geodesic do ...

formed with aluminum struts. Every one of the struts' 260 intersections is covered by aluminum circles with lights in the center. At night, the globe at the building's top is illuminated with 259 custom LED fixtures, manufactured by Altman Lighting and Color Kinetics, a division of

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

Solid State Lighting
Wiedamark
a Dallas-based LED lighting company, led the development, installation and programming of the lights. The original lighting fixtures were conventional incandescent and every unit used 130 watts of electricity. In contrast, the new LED lighting system with all of its color and animation capabilities requires less than 1/5 of the electricity of the old system. Each point on the Reunion Tower is, in fact, using as much electricity as an average nightlight and as much two nightlights at its brightest setting. Reunion Tower Light Fixture Front

Every fixture has a collaboration of several red, green and blue (

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three addi ...

) LED lights that are diffused behind a 3/4-inch thick opaque glass cover. While each fixture is very large at nearly 16 inches in diameter, they function in exactly the same way as a

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

on the screen of a cellular phone. By varying the intensity of red, green and blue, the system is able to create every visible color from pinks and purples to white. By moving these colors around the globe at a fluid rate, animations and movement are perceived. All 259 fixtures are controlled by Color Kinetics hardware to execute various computer-generated patterns and colors along the surface of the sphere. The

DMX512 DMX512 is a standard for digital communication networks that are commonly used to control lighting and effects. It was originally intended as a standardized method for controlling stage lighting dimmers, which, prior to DMX512, had employe ...

lighting protocol is used to communicate with the fixtures. Each fixture is manufactured from solid cast stainless steel and weighs over 20 pounds. Making the tower an iconic landmark on the Dallas skyline, lighting on the globe is also used for special events and holidays across the city (for example, the winter season will feature seasonal colors and animations; for St. Patrick's Day, it will be illuminated in green; for patriotic events, it will be lit in red, white and blue; etc.) The globe was lit up in rainbow colors on June 26, 2015 to celebrate the supreme court ruling which legalized same sex marriage.

Attractions

View of GeO-Deck of Reunion Tower August 2015 25

Celebrity chef A celebrity chef is a kitchen chef who has become a celebrity. Today, chefs often become celebrities by presenting cookery advice and demonstrations, usually through the media of television and radio, or in printed publications. While television ...

Wolfgang Puck Wolfgang Johannes Puck (born July 8, 1949) is an Austrian-American chef and restaurateur. Early life and career Puck was born in Sankt Veit an der Glan, Austria. He learned cooking from his mother, who was a pastry chef. He took the surname ...

opened the fine dining

''Five Sixty'' on the tower's rotating top level on February 11, 2009. The name is a reference to the restaurant's elevation. The middle floor of the tower is used for special events managed by Wolfgang Puck Catering, which is based at nearby Union Station. After 11 years, Five Sixty closed permanently in April 2020, felled by

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quick ...

. The Observation level is called the "GeO-Deck". The interior facility includes an interactive digital experience featuring information about Dallas landmarks, Reunion Tower itself, the events of

November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle with ...

, live view high-definition cameras and more. The exterior of the observation deck features telescopes with views in every direction. The Cloud 9 is accessible from the observation deck, serving a 360-degree view from behind glass while the floor slowly spins. The gift shop, Kaleidoscope, at the tower's base features souvenirs related to Reunion Tower, Dallas and Texas and other novelty items.

In the media

* The Reunion Tower is the setting for a scene in the second season of ''

''. At the time, the structure had only been standing for about six months. * The Reunion Tower is the setting for the finale of the 1986 action film '' Getting Even''. * The landmark appears as a symbol of futurist society in the 1980 film ''

The Lathe of Heaven ''The Lathe of Heaven'' is a 1971 science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The plot concerns a character whose dreams alter past and present reality. The story was serialized in the American science fiction magazine ''Amazing ...

'' (starring

Bruce Davison Bruce Allen Davison (born June 28, 1946) is an American actor and director. Davison is well known for his starring role as Willard Stiles in the cult horror film '' Willard'' (1971) and his Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning perfor ...

). * Shots of the building also make an appearance in the 2011

Terrence Malick Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. His films include ''Days of Heaven'' (1978), '' The Thin Red Line'' (1998), for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay ...

film '' The Tree of Life''. * Reunion Tower can also be seen in the opening credits of the long-running CBS TV series ''

''. * Reunion Tower can also be seen in the 1987 film ''

RoboCop ''RoboCop'' is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, and Miguel Fer ...

'' (starring

Peter Weller Peter Weller (born June 24, 1947) is an American film and stage actor, television director, and art historian. He has appeared in more than 70 films and television series, including '' RoboCop'' (1987) and its sequel '' RoboCop 2'' (1990), in wh ...

), although the film is set in Detroit. * In the 1997 made-for-TV movie ''

Asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

'' (starring Annabella Sciorra) the Reunion Tower is abruptly destroyed during a meteorite shower on Dallas, Texas during the opening credits of the second half of the movie. This is the only known disaster movie to feature the tower in any scene of destruction. * It appears in the season finale of '' The Amazing Race 26''. * The entertainment group Dude Perfect made a shot from Reunion Tower in their video "Reunion Tower Shot". * Reunion Tower can be seen in the season one episode of Halt and Catch Fire "High Plains Hardware". *Site of Go Nukes 2 scenes * Reunion Tower can also be seen in some episodes of

Walker, Texas Ranger ''Walker, Texas Ranger'' is an American action crime television series created by Leslie Greif and Paul Haggis. It was inspired by the film '' Lone Wolf McQuade'', with both this series and that film starring Chuck Norris as a member of the ...

TV Series.

Gallery

File:Reunion Tower - Dallas, USA.jpg, Reunion Tower - Dallas, USA File:Reunion_tower_dallas_texas_051605_kdh.jpg File:Reunion_Tower_dallas.jpg File:Reunion_tower_from_crowley.jpg File:Reunion_Tower_Dallas.JPG File:Reunion-Tower-0244.jpg File:Reunion-Tower-0262.jpg File:Reunion Tower Light Fixture Side View.jpg File:Reunion Tower Light Fixture Front.jpg

References

External links

Reunion Tower official website

Reunion Tower image gallery
at DFWStructures.com {{Downtown Dallas Towers completed in 1978 Buildings and structures in Dallas Modernist architecture in Texas Towers with revolving restaurants Downtown Dallas Towers in Texas Welton Becket buildings Observation towers in the United States