Why the ceilings are just a little bit lower now than when Chase Tower was built - asbestos


If you work inside of the tallest building in Arizona, Chase Tower, at Central Avenue and Monroe, take a look up at the ceilings. They were lowered in 1990, just a bit, because of the asbestos up there, which is still there.

Now, don't panic. The asbestos, which was put there in 1972 when Valley Center was built, is still doing its job, protecting the building from any fires that may spread. And it's only disturbed asbestos that's hazardous (when you breathe in the fibers), so as long as it's sealed up, it's OK. In a building as big as that one, trying to remove asbestos would have made a terrible mess, so they just lowered the ceilings a little and sealed it up.

The reason I know this is that when I first started working for Valley Bank around that time, different departments were relocated, for months, all over the valley. The Marketing Department, where I started, was at Corporate Center across the freeway from MetroCenter. You know, over by Fajitas. When the asbestos was sealed up and all was safe, the departments were moved back in. For me, it was 1991. That's the first time I saw Valley Center (now Chase Tower).

I'm a Graphic Designer, but a frustrated architect (I couldn't do the math) so I was immediately fascinated by the building, which was called the Bank One building while I was there in the 90s. It's still an amazing building now, and it has been lovingly cared for since the day it was built. The design is really late 1960s, in the way that architects imagined that space stations would look like in the future. Even the fonts used by the elevators are the classic 1960s "space age" fonts. I loved working there, and it really did feel like a space ship.

I doubt anyone nowadays cares that the ceilings are slightly lower than when the building was built, or that there's sealed asbestos up there, and it really doesn't matter. People, and buildings, learn over time.

Image above: Valley Center under construction in 1972. You are looking northeast. The original headquarters for Valley Bank was in the Professional Building, which you can see at right, and which is now the Hilton Garden Inn.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more