Fifth Avenue Place (originally "Hillman Tower", sometimes called Highmark Place for its major tenant) is a skyscraper in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. United States.
The building was completed in 1988 and it has 31 floors. Located at the corner of Liberty Avenue and Fifth Avenue, it rises 616 feet (188 m) above Downtown Pittsburgh. The structure is made up of a unique granite frame for roughly the first 450 feet (140 m), then collapses inward in a pyramidal shape for another 124-foot-tall (38 m) roof structure. The roof utilizes four prisms clad in granite and encloses a penthouse area that stores the mechanics for the building as well as the cooling towers. Before Highmark's branding of the top of the tower, there were video screens at the base of the decorative summit of the building.
Protruding from the top of the skyscraper is a 178-foot-tall (54 m) mast manufactured by Meyer Industry of Minnesota. Despite its rounded appearance, the 13-story steel structure is actually 12-sided and measures four feet in diameter. Due to high winds, the mast allows for up to three feet of sway. The height at the top of the mast represents the intended height for the building when it was in development. However, the city decided that that height would not fit in well with the skyline, so the height of the main structure was restricted to what it is today.
Famous quotes containing the words avenue and/or place:
“Along the avenue of cypresses,
All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices
Of linen, go the chanting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . .”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)