Thirty years later, it’s still the tallest tower in Charlotte.
This week marks three decades since the official opening of the Bank of America Corporate Center, the headquarters of the city’s largest bank and the tip of its crown-shaped skyline.
The building — a.k.a. the “tower of power” or the “Taj McColl,” — opened in 1992 as NationsBank Corporate Center.
The leading force behind the building was then-CEO Hugh McColl. (In 1998, NationsBank merged with BankAmerica to become Bank of America, and McColl remained its CEO.)
“I wanted something that reeked of power and wealth,” McColl told the Observer in 2012 for the tower’s 20th anniversary, “but was (also) warm and friendly.”
The Charlotte Observer took a spin through our archives to hunt down a few fun facts about the building. Here are a few things you might not know about the tower:
It was meant to make a statement
McColl, who retired from Bank of America in 2001, oversaw the tower construction — and had a bit of a point to prove in doing it.
When he first announced plans for the building, McColl was an ambitious and relatively young chief executive who wanted to take homegrown North Carolina National Bank into the stratosphere — literally. As CEO, he took advantage of new banking laws to swallow up smaller institutions and grow beyond state borders.
Through those deals, NCNB became NationsBank in 1991 and Bank of America in 1998. And as the mergers piled up, so did the need for more space.
During the same period, another Charlotte bank was employing a similar strategy.
First Union, the bank that would become Wachovia and then Wells Fargo, had a similar appetite for acquisitions. It was headquartered in a 42-story-tower, now the One Wells Fargo building, on the south side of uptown.
At the time, McColl denied glancing down Tryon Street before building the 60-story skyscraper that literally would loom over his rival. But years later, he told the Observer: “I’ll have to admit that we wanted to do something dramatic on our end of town.”
McColl didn’t want an all-glass skyscraper
Keen on picking a famous architect, McColl settled on Argentinian architect Cesar Pelli. McColl went with Pelli’s design because it “looked more like stone than glass.”
The result? A “huge, powerful granite building,” he described to the Observer, one that visitors could spot from miles away.
It was built atop a gold mine
Before Charlotte was Banktown, the city was the center of the Carolina Gold Rush. In the 1800s, there were 16 gold mines scattered throughout Mecklenburg County.
Two of them, St. Catherine and Rudisill, ran as deep as 400 feet below what would become uptown.
The city’s largest banking HQ would be built — coincidentally — right above remnants of that gold-mining past. While digging out the foundation for the tower, construction workers discovered wooden frames of a mine that was still intact and flecks of gold in the rock.
The fancy lights are relatively new
The tower has 384 spires on its crown, lit for the first time in May 1992.
Over the years, it mostly gleamed with white lights, with a few exceptions like the Panthers’ Super Bowl appearances.
More complex light displays came only in 2017, when the bank upgraded the LED lighting system. Now, the crown capping the tower can glow red white and blue for the Fourth of July or with the colors of the rainbow for Pride Month.
But the bank didn’t just rely on those spires to celebrate special occasions in Charlotte.
When the city was trying to land the Panthers, its first pro football team, the bank spelled out “NFL” on the side of the building in 1993 by turning on lights in the windows.
It’s still the tallest building in NC
At 871 feet, the corporate center is still the tallest building in all of North Carolina — and South Carolina, too. It’s more than 300 feet taller than the Washington Monument, and just about a hundred feet shy of the Eiffel Tower.
The bank had to get clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration for its construction. Before the tower was built, the tallest building in Charlotte was the One Wells Fargo Center at about 588 feet tall.
Today, the Bank of America headquarters is still visible to the naked eye from up to 35 miles away.
It’s safe to say that so far, McColl succeeded in the goal he described to the Observer when the building turned 20: “My thinking was, we’re going to build something that’s going to dominate the skyline forever.”
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 10:23 AM.
