Houston's RepublicBank Center opened in 1983, and contained something strange inside its 56-story structure: a two-story Western Union building that had been there before the tower was built. The office tower is now known as TC Energy Center, and stands at 700 Louisiana Street in downtown Houston. It rises 780 feet and was designed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee. According to Hines , the developer of the project, the 56-story tower was completed in 1983 and contains about 1.5 million square feet of office space.
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The smaller building at the northeast corner of the site belonged to Western Union. It housed equipment and cables used for telegraph communications. Relocating that infrastructure was considered impractical when plans for the skyscraper were developed, and the solution was to incorporate it into the new tower instead of removing the older building.
The older building was still carrying communications equipment
Western Union's Houston operation occupied the two-story structure before construction of the skyscraper began. The building contained machinery, wiring and other equipment associated with the company's telegraph network. That infrastructure presented a problem for the redevelopment of the block.
The Houston Chronicle reported in 2017 that Hines originally wanted to clear the entire site. The company found that moving the Western Union building and, more importantly, the equipment and miles of cable around it would have disrupted service and cost millions of dollars. According to the article, the development team instead incorporated the Western Union building into the new tower, preserving the older structure within the larger project. The decision meant the new skyscraper could occupy the site without requiring the existing communications infrastructure to be removed. Construction began in the early 1980s, and the new tower was designed around the existing Western Union structure rather than replacing it.
A building inside a building
The finished tower became one of Houston's more unusual examples of adaptive construction. The two-story Western Union structure remained at the northeast corner, while the much larger office tower rose around it. The granite exterior of the skyscraper concealed much of the older building, leaving what was essentially a building within a building. The tower itself was designed in a very different architectural style from the Western Union structure, since Johnson and Burgee had used a postmodern design that was influenced by European architecture. The exterior was clad in Napoleon red granite, and the upper sections were divided into several setbacks beneath a steeply pitched roof.
The completed building was originally called the RepublicBank Center, and later became the NCNB Center, NationsBank Center and Bank of America Center before receiving its current name, TC Energy Center, in 2019. Hines states that the building was designed by Johnson and Burgee and that its 56 floors contain more than 1.2 million square feet of space, while the adjacent banking hall rises 125 feet. The Western Union building, meanwhile, remained largely hidden inside the tower for decades.
The hidden structure was eventually opened
The original purpose of the older building disappeared, as telecommunications technology changed. By the 2010s, the enclosed structure had been unused for many years. Its existence became rather interesting when the building's owners began looking for ways to reuse the space.
In 2017, M-M Properties announced plans to renovate the hidden Western Union building. The proposal called for the enclosed space to be opened up and converted into a restaurant, with additional office or conference space planned for the second floor. The Houston Chronicle reported that the renovation would expose parts of the old Western Union structure that had been hidden behind the tower's granite facade. The Western Union structure had therefore outlasted the communications system that originally made it difficult to remove.
Today, the tower remains one of downtown Houston's recognizable office buildings. A 56-story office tower occupies the site, but part of its northeast corner still contains the two-story structure that once housed Western Union's Houston operation. Relocating the existing communications infrastructure was considered too difficult and expensive, because of which, the older building stayed, and the skyscraper was built around it.
