600 Congress (formerly known as One American Center) is a high-rise office building located at the northwest corner of West 6th Street and

Congress Avenue Congress Avenue is a major thoroughfare in Austin, Texas. The street is a six-lane, tree lined avenue that cuts through the middle of the city from far south Austin and goes over Lady Bird Lake leading to the Texas State Capitol in the heart of ...

in the Financial District of

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

, the state capital of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. Standing 400 feet (122 meters) tall and containing 32 floors, it is currently the 12th tallest building in Austin, tied with the Four Seasons Residences. The construction of One American Center was completed in 1984 and was developed by Rust Properties. It was the tallest building in Austin until the finishing of the

Frost Bank Tower The Frost Bank Tower is a skyscraper in Austin, Texas, United States. Standing 515 feet (157 m) tall with 33 floors, it is the fifth tallest building in Austin, behind The Independent, The Austonian, Fairmont Austin, and the 360 Co ...

in 2003. In 2017, One American Center was rebranded as 600 Congress. Annually, Make-A-Wish Central and South Texas has a fundraising event called "Over The Edge," in which the first 300 persons to raise $1,500 in donations get to rappel 32 stories down 600 Congress.

History

Construction on the One American Center began on August 16, 1982. The building replaced a former 2-story

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

-style

Woolworth's Department Store The F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as Woolworth's or simply Woolworth) was a retail company and one of the pioneers of the five-and-dime store. It was among the most successful American and international five-and-dime businesses, se ...

, which had since housed a 5 and dime at the time of the building's demolition. Street-front diagonal parking on Congress Avenue was removed to make way for an expanded granite sidewalk and landscaping, including two rows of Texas red oak trees. A matching 22-story hotel was originally planned on the northwest corner of the property adjoining the building, but was never built.

Architecture

The

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

building was designed by

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

-based Morris-Aubry Architects. The building is designed with three stair-stepped tiers clad in pre-cast

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

trimmed with brown granite. The 20,000 cubic feet of granite consists of Sunset Red

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

from

Marble Falls, Texas Marble Falls is a city in Burnet County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city population was 7,033. Lake Marble Falls is part of the Highland Lakes on the Colorado River, the largest chain of lakes in Texas. Hi ...

and Charlie Brown granite from

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

, which was cut and polished in Puebla, Mexico. The ground level facade of the building contains notches to give the appearance of individual storefronts.

References

External links

* Skyscraper office buildings in Austin, Texas 1982 establishments in Texas Office buildings completed in 1982 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certified buildings Postmodern architecture in Texas {{Texas-struct-stub