- 400 West Market, a tower in downtown Louisville, is the highest building in Kentucky and climbs 549 feet into the sky.
- The 400 West Market, which was previously known as a capital Holding Center and Aegon Center, is known for its distinctive dome.
- The building was designed by architect John Burgeee as headquarters for the Capital Holding Insurance Company from Louisville. It was opened in 1993.
The well -known American architect John Burgeee Uchste in 1988 in the Seelbach Hotel and brought “what I used to be called against the sky” to the city center of Louisville.
“When you think of different cities, you generally think of one or two buildings that distinguish you – the Empire State Building, Obviously or the Chrysler building in New York,” Burgeee, now 91, recalled in a telephone interview with the Courier Journal from his California house.
“Every place has something. So I thought young, Louisville could use a respected building with a silhouette that would be recognizable. “
The Capital Holding Center – the arched tower, which is now called 400 West Market – was this vision. It has been 35 years since the crews on the fourth and market road broke on the floor, and almost 32 years since Burgeee has participated in the opening.
It is still the highest building in Kentucky, a 35-story, 650,000 square meter high-rise with a height of 549 feet. And in a district in the city center, which is still dealing with a changing office market, according to Doug Owen, a senior vice president of the commercial real estate management company JLL, it is still one of the most sought -after rooms for commercial tenants.
“It is The Iconic building in the city center, ”said Owen, whose father once worked in the building in the early days. “It is very recognizable.”
The story
It is easy to adopt that the Capital Holding Center – as it was mentioned at the opening – was built as a film for the Humana building, the architect Michael Graves', who opened in 1985, praised in the city center of the headquarters in the city center Louisville.
Burgeee was once quoted that he was motivated to “exceed” the Humana building, reported the Courier Journal in 1990. As he later clarified, his true goal was to create a high-quality building with a slim budget.
“Graves has a graves style. This building cannot be confused with no one, ”said Burgeee, who previously headed Johnson/Burgeee Architects's company together with the famous architect Philip Johnson. “But I didn't want to approach my practice like that. I felt more drawn to make a contribution to a certain place. “
The executives of capital kept themselves.
At that time, the life insurance company had its headquarters along Fourth Street and Broadway within sight of the Brown Hotel and wanted to expand for decades of business to take up a growing staff.
Randy Waddell, the project manager of development, said that the headquarters are not guaranteed to stay in the Bluegrass State because the business “grew quickly” in the 1980s.
When the chairman Tom Simons, a well -known company manager, commissioned a study for the next location of Capital Holding: “There was a lot of disagreements about whether we should re -enact so much capital in Louisville.”
“One of the things I really noticed was that Tom Simons was found that this is our community,” said Waddell, now Senior Vice President in the local office of Commercial real estate company Northmarq. “He took a very strong attitude to close the opposition – similar to:” We owe it to this community to devote ourselves to this community. “I really respected that.”
Simons did not live to see the tower completed or even its groundbreaking. He died in August 1988 and was replaced by Irv Bailey. A statue of Simons is now standing along the Fourth Street and waving across the street to a statue of his friend J. Graham Brown and his dog Woozum in front of his namesake.
Burgees Louisville was about at that time. As a native Chicago, who was familiar with the Kentucky Derby, he went on the way to Churchill Downs in the few days in which he was in the city – but the journey went for business.
He had not yet been involved, but he wanted to see the city before he met Waddell and the visionary developer Gerald Hines, whose company had been selected for the project in Houston. His knowledge of the city impressed Waddell and others and distinguished him from finalists such as the Petronas Twin Towers' Cesar Pelli (“Our second place, very politely,” said Waddell) and William Pedersen (“You had just finished 333 Wacker, that's still an iconic building in Chicago “).
The long weekend in Louisville had made Burgeee an impression. People he met were “very proud of the city and also very interested in keeping them alive and going,” he said.
He was also in the minds of people in the city center, he said. The Commonwealth Convention Center (now the Kentucky International Convention Center) was opened on the other side of the Fourth Street in 1977 and dominated what said “Waddell” “Wanted” badly grossed up “.
Fourth and market roads, which at the time consisted of about a dozen smaller properties, was “the entrance, and people had to see that”. It took years for the capital participation to capture the country, and the city had to threaten to acquire part of it by renewing the cities-“We were sued, I was dismissed,” Waddell did not remember so easily, but until 1990 The final, the final the design for the 100 million dollar tower was approved, with the first renderings of the famous dome released in March.
In 1990, Burgees office was in the Seagram building, a New York skyscraper with a flat top. It is “one of the best buildings of that time,” he said, but “if you are two blocks away, you cannot say it from the cheap developer building next door.”
The new headquarters of the capital needed a defining element to exceed it, and the company's managers are “excited to have something that was differentiated with them that they identified”. The early renderings included a pyramid that fits a four -sided building, but the design team decided on a dome after “probably went through 100 playback,” said Waddell.
The stone – according to the 1992 reporting of more than 1,600 tons – was dismantled on three continents and sent from Italy. It was affordable thanks to a relatively new reconciliation system, said Waddell, where a few centimeters depth delivered the same effect as 12 inch thick stone, which was used in other rear buildings.
The goal was to avoid “a different glass box”, said Burgeee, and “Balancing it so that it has a feeling of stone and still gives the transparency that people can enjoy to be in it.” The project used a total of 37,000 meters of cubic concrete, 3,400 tons of steel steel, 94,000 tons of bricks and blocks, 73 tons of stainless steel, 235 miles electrical cables and 2,420 windows.
“The city itself has a stone masonry feeling,” said the architect. “I think it was pretty successful there. I was very happy with it.”
The switch was finally thrown on May 4, 1993, and 65 sodium lights under the dome in the Capital Holding Center for the first time.
Change and continuity
The name, such as the future of Capital Holding in Louisville, did not last forever.
The company was renamed Providian in 1994, and the building was renamed the Aegon Center in 1997 after the purchase of Providian. In 2014 it changed to 400 West Market in 2014 to reflect its address. This name remains more than 10 years later.
However, the test of the time has not changed everything. Ask Chris Cieminski, the construction manager who has worked on site more than three decades ago. He remembers that he worked “seven days a week” to help the capital participants move workers with Broadway to the new headquarters after being hired at the end of 1992.
“There was a big hype about the opening of the building,” he said in an interview this year in the tenant lounge on the first floor with a billiard table for visitors and the ripening of the complex on a wall. “It's definitely a monument on the skyline.”
The capital participation took some of the lower floors, while some of the top offices were rented to law firms and other companies. Local managers such as Bruce Lunsford, Ed Glasscock and J. David Grissom have held court in his suites of the upper level over the years, Cieminski- “Basically said people who were leading in our community.”
Waddell still lives in Louisville, but only worked briefly at the headquarters in the city center. Burgeee has no longer visited the city since he took part in the opening of the building, even though he has good memories of working with the then mayor Jerry Abramson.
In a changing city and a market, however, the complex in the Fourth and Market Street has remained an important staple in the city center.
The central business district of the city had a vacancy rate of around 21%last November, a jump from several points since the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. According to Owen, who serves as a rental representative for almost a decade, space in the 400 -Western market is still relatively scarce. The top nine floors are all fully booked, and the partnership in downtown Louisville reports that the vacancy rate is lower than 18%.
Part of it is the story. Cieminski said that the 400 West Market has long had a reputation as a “Premier building” in the city center.
“This building was always in the (central business district) of the preferred address,” he said.
However, the 400-Western market has also changed to take into account a changing business environment that adapts to the increase in hybrid work plans according to the amount of the Covid 19 pandemic.
The recently renovated two-story office of Stoll Keenon Ogden PLLC comprises an employee lounge, said Owen, while Frost Brown Todd integrated several smaller lounge areas that aim to create a room where employees actually want to spend time. Previously, the creative agency Scoppechio built an “open and creative space” with a staircase and a slide that connects its two floors.
“It is a building that tenants and companies in what they want to do and what they want to create there were very flexible,” said Owen.
According to Cieminski, 400 West Market has been a signature in downtown Louisville for more than 30 years. The city center has adapted over three decades, but some things have not changed.
“We have tenants who are in the building because they want to be in the building,” he said. “We set the standard when this building was completed in 1993, and I think we have kept this standard over the years.”
Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.