Tower
By 1905, increased shipping required the building's expansion. In 1913–1915, the architecture firm Peabody and Stearns added the tower to the base. Although Boston at that time had a 125-foot (38-m) height restriction, the Custom House was federally owned and exempt from it. The new tower's 496 feet (151 m) made it the city's tallest. In 1947, the Old John Hancock Building, just one foot shorter, joined it in the skies over Boston. In 1964, it was exceeded by the Prudential Tower. The clock on the upper tower of the building is 22 feet (6.7 m) in diameter. Because of an undersized motor, it failed to work properly through much of the 20th century. In 1960, the Great Seal of the United States was painted in the lobby's dome.
Read more about this topic: Custom House Tower
Famous quotes containing the word tower:
“With the noise of the mourning of the Swattish nation!
Fallen is at length
Its tower of strength;
Its sun is dimmed ere it had nooned;
Dead lies the great Ahkoond,
The great Ahkoond of Swat
Is not!”
—George Thomas Lanigan (1845–1886)
“The tower nearest the water gets the moonlight first.”
—Chinese proverb.
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)