PNC Bank Building, High-rise office building in Market West, Center City, Philadelphia, United States
The PNC Bank Building is a 39-story glass and steel tower on the corner of 16th and Market Street in Center City, Philadelphia, serving as the regional headquarters for PNC Bank. The rectangular structure rises to about 491 feet (150 meters) and fills a prominent corner of the city's central business district.
The building was completed in 1983, designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in partnership with developer Don Pulver, during a period when Philadelphia's skyline was changing quickly. PNC Bank took over several floors in 1997, turning the tower into its regional base of operations.
The building sits in a part of Center City where finance and business dominate the streetscape, giving the area a working-day energy that shifts noticeably on weekends. Nearby plazas and ground-floor spaces tend to fill with office workers during lunch hours.
The tower stands right next to the Liberty Place complex, so finding it from the surrounding streets is straightforward. Because it is an active office building, public access is generally limited to the lobby and ground-floor areas.
When it was built in 1983, the tower was one of the first in Philadelphia to break a long-standing informal rule that no building should rise above the hat of the William Penn statue on City Hall. That shift opened the door for a wave of towers that reshaped what Center City looks like today.
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