ExxonMobil Building
Formerly: Humble Oil Building Built: 1963 Designed by: Welton Becket Associates Type: Skyscraper Stories: 44 Maximum Height: 600 feet / 183 meters Location: 800 Bell Avenue, Houston, United States
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T his is one of those buildings that trained architects love, and ordinary people scratch their heads at. To lay people it looks like a bunch of concrete slabs stacked on top of each other like a parking garage. To professionals, its brutality speaks of an internal strength matched only by its openness of form and oneness with the surrounding hostility of an urban environment. Whatever. The fact remains that this building is showing its age. It was constructed at a time when the future looked like brushed concrete cities in the sky. Not only was it considered the height of fashion, it was also the tallest building in the western United States. But love it, or hate it, those horizontal slabs serve a purpose – they keep the blazing Houston sun at bay. Similar, more elegant, versions of architectural shades have been installed at Enron Center South. They are hardly noticeable unless you stand almost underneath the building. In this structure, architectural shades are an integral part of the building. At the upper floors where there are no higher stories to provide shade, aluminum louvers keep the sun out of the two-story Petroleum Club.

• 1994 - Fire breaks out in the Exxon Building. Two people are hospitalized. It was caused by cleaning rags.

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Terry
Sunday, February 14th, 2010 @ 12:05am
Rating: Five stars.
My husband currently works for ExxonMobil in this building but did not grow up in Houston like I did. Recently I told him how in the 1960s my family went up to the observation deck at night to see the lights of Houston. Also, my parents would give me coins (how much was it?) for the machine that made a mold of the building. He had never heard any of this! Does anyone still have their model and would post a picture?

Adrian
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 @ 9:54am
Rating: Five stars.
Well thought out design.The grid work becomes "the language" of the building and it reads very well .

bilbao58
Thursday, July 26th, 2007 @ 12:19am
The Moldarama! It made your choice of the Humble Building or the Domed Stadium (Astrodome). I remember it from the mid-60s when I was just a little kid whose dad worked for Humble.

Robert Coyle
Monday, July 2nd, 2007 @ 11:11pm
Rating: Four stars.
I rememeber the public observation deck. There used to be a vending machine on that level that produced models of the Humble Oil Building made out of wax, formed while you waited. This was in the early-1970s, I believe.