AT&T Midtown Center

AT&T Midtown Center I
AT&T Midtown Center I viewed from the south
location in Midtown Atlanta
Former names	BellSouth Building Southern Bell Telephone Building
General information
Location	675 W Peachtree St NW Atlanta, GA 30308
Coordinates
Completed	1980
Height
Roof	206.4 m (677 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	47
Design and construction
Architect	Skidmore, Owings & Merrill FABRAP
Engineer	Weidlinger Associates
References

AT&T Midtown Center I (formerly known as BellSouth Center and Southern Bell Center) is a 206.4 m (677 ft), 47-story skyscraper in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia. Completed in 1982, it serves as the regional headquarters of BellSouth Telecommunications, which does business as AT&T Southeast, and was acquired as part of AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth. BellSouth Corporate headquarters was located in the Campanile building, also in Midtown.

Background

The company, then called Southern Bell, originally planned to build the parking deck for the tower one block further east at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Peachtree Street. This would have required the razing of the historic Fox Theatre which would have been an especially great loss to the city after the downtown Loew's Grand Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1978. Tremendous opposition, protests, fundraising, and petition drives within the community prevented the Fox's demolition. Even Liberace spoke out on behalf of the "Fabulous Fox". In the end, a complicated deal was struck to build the parking deck on an alternate site north of the main tower on West Peachtree Street.

The building has a direct entrance to the North Avenue MARTA Station, which is located at the southern end of the complex and was built concurrently with the building. In 2002, BellSouth completed construction of two additional mid-rise buildings adjacent to the tower to form its BellSouth Midtown Center campus as part of its effort to consolidate office space around mass transit stations.

The architects who designed the tower were Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Rosser International, Inc. The general contractor for its construction was Beers Skanska, Inc. The building also served as a filming location for the 1993 science fiction action film RoboCop 3, in which it was used as the setting for the headquarters of the evil megacorporation O.C.P, the main antagonist organization in the RoboCop trilogy.

See also

• Architecture of Atlanta
• List of tallest buildings in Atlanta

External links

• AT&T Midtown Center at AccessAtlanta