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)
“Shall I still be love’s house on the widdershin earth,
Woe to the windy masons at my shelter?
Love’s house, they answer, and the tower death
Lie all unknowing of the grave sin-eater.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“So was produced this tragedy
In a far tower of ivory
Where, O young men, late in the night
All you who drink light and stroke the air
Come back, seeking the night, and cry
To strict Rapunzel to let down her hair.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)