Calgary Tower thread updated Sept 2000. See bottom post for the latest...----------------------------------------------------------------
The Calgary Herald is inviting ideas on the fate or future of the Calgary Tower. See the editorials below. You can send your Save-the-Tower suggestions via e-mail to: letters@theherald.canwest.com. Feel free to also paste your ideas to the bottom of this page
Tower is losing iconic status
Once a standout, city's symbol fading as signature building
Calgary Herald
Monday, March 06, 2006
Paris has the Eiffel Tower and New York City has the Empire State building. Calgary has the pointy, concrete projectile built in 1967-68 by Husky Oil and Marathon Realty Company Limited.
And, although it's had its moments, it's fair to say our city's signature building has not aged as well as architectural marvels in some of the world's great cities. In fact, compared to the skyscrapers that have emerged in Calgary since it was built, it's looking downright stubby.
Now, with EnCana's plans to build a spectacular new architectural marvel downtown -- with the lead architect Lord Norman Foster and two Calgary firms, Zeidler Partnership, and Sturgess Page + Steel -- the Calgary Tower may lose its position as the key vertical symbol for the city.
With it changing hands last week, it's time to debate the fate of the Calgary Tower as it gradually disappears into a forest of new buildings.
In its defence, the Tower represents Calgary and the West more than many might know. The architect responsible for the concept, Bill Milne, told the Herald that inspiration came, surprisingly, from prairie grain elevators -- not the boxy wooden versions -- but the concrete circular ones scattered across Western Canada.
Like many Calgarians, Milne moved here from somewhere else, in this case, Winnipeg. He conceived a tower as a 1967 centennial project to be funded by federal tax dollars, but the local committee chose to fund the planetarium instead. Then, the private sector stepped in.
Glen Neilsen, then-president of Husky Oil, liked the idea and pushed ahead with the project. He partnered with Marathon Realty, which then handed it over to architect Albert Dale for design.
Christened the Husky Tower, it was re-named the Calgary Tower in 1971.
Rod Sykes, later the city's mayor, but then vice-president of Marathon, notes that from solving problems of expensive and dangerous window-cleaning to a smoothly-rotating revolving floor, to a record-setting continuous concrete pour (the same technique employed to build those grain elevators), the tower was innovative in its day, including the height: It was briefly the tallest building in the western hemisphere at 626 feet.
After five years, it was also profitable, unlike some other shorter towers around the world.
If successful symbols of urban life are connected to their people, their self-understanding and their surroundings, the tower -- built by Calgary's private sector with innovation, profitable, and conceived by an arrival who looked across the prairies for inspiration -- passes the test.
To Calgarians who witnessed its birth, it is iconic. However, to visitors seeking a world class thrill, it is a stretch.
Has the Tower's day passed? Or, is it merely feeling the effects of middle age? Should it be kept and cherished? Or should it be ripped down to make way for more glorious structures?