When the Westin Peachtree Plaza opened in 1976, it was Atlanta's tallest building, the tallest hotel in the world, and the tallest building in the Southeast. Since then, however, other buildings have taken those titles. But, it is still a very striking and tall building - it is 73 floors and 723 feet tall. It has 1,068 rooms. When most people think of the Atlanta skyline - this is one of the first buildings that come to their mind. The outside is made up of reflective glass windows. It has a cool glass elevator on the outside (see the bump on the left side there) so you can view the entire city while riding up to the Sundial restaurant that is on the top floor. The Sundial is a rotating restaurant, while you dine, you get a full 360 degree view of the city.
As you can see, there seem to be some gaps in the windows. That is is because on March 14, 2008, a tornado touched down in Downtown Atlanta - it is VERY rare for a tornado to hit inside a city (they are more likely to hit open areas). The tornado caused quite a bit of damage and the Peachtree Plaza got hit really hard - breaking over 500 windows.
Of all the buildings that had tornado damage, the Peachtree Plaza is the only one that hasn't replaced all of its windows yet. Why is it taking so long? Well, the glass used is the hotel is no longer manufactured. New windows will look mismatched because the remaining ones have been weathered from 30+ years of sitting in the southern sunshine. Plus, since the windows were first installed, there have been changes in the building codes.
Therefore all 5,600 windows are being replaced from the top down (at a cost of around $20 million - thank goodness for insurance, huh?) . They are expected to have all been replaced by mid-2010
No comments:
Post a Comment