LA now the home to tallest building west of Mississippi
LOS ANGELES — The tallest building west of the Mississippi River opened its doors on Friday in oncestodgy downtown Los Angeles, which is sprouting a crop of new skyscrapers.
The 73-story building has a huge spire that brings its height to 1,100 feet, topping the nearby U.S. Bank Tower by more than 80 feet. The Bank Tower had held the height record since 1989.
Critics might argue that a spire rising nearly 200 feet above the top of the building should not count, but it meets the criteria of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which lists the world’s tallest buildings based on the “architectural top of the building.” A 2-foot lightning rod at the very top, however, doesn’t count.
The skyscraper is still dwarfed by buildings on the East Coast and overseas. In the United States, One World Trade Center is 1,776 feet tall, making it the sixthlargest completed building in the world. The tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, rises 2,717 feet, or more than a half-mile high.
The tower features a 100-foot-tall, sail-shaped crown built of glass and steel. It is the first modern high-rise in Los Angeles without a flat roof. Since 1974, high-rise buildings had to have helicopter pads in case of fires or other emergencies. The Wilshire Center obtained Fire Department permission to use other safety features, including a special landing platform and a dedicated elevator for firefighters. The city ended the flat-roof requirement in 2015.