Suburban Sore Thumbs
 

outside of a few little clumps in places like evanston, schaumburg, and oak park, suburban chicago generally doesn't do highrises.

but we do have a big one that sticks out like a sore thumb on the pancake flat topography of chicagoland's seemingly infinite sprawltopia.

"how did something that tall and expensive get built in the relative middle of nowhere?"


Oak Brook Terrace Tower | 418 FT | 31 FLOORS | 1986

google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8521.../data=!3m1!1e3

https://s3-prod.chicagobusiness.com/...49.59%20AM.png
source: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...ands-big-lease






how about your metro, do you have any lonely suburban sore thumb towers?

All that building needs is a moat full of crocodiles and it would be perfect.

great idea for a thread, and I kind of love the Oak Brook tower.

Oral Roberts University near Tulsa, OK has one or two examples, iirc?

The NY area has a couple that I know of, but not many. You can spot some from the NJ Turnpike, like here and here.

Suburban Detroit is littered with them, so it would be a very time consuming to document them all. Most of the towers built in the Detroit area since the 1960s would qualify. I'd be surprised if the Detroit area isn't in the top 3 nationally for count of towers thrown up in random ass places. But here are some examples:

Southfield apartment tower: https://goo.gl/maps/e7JvmGMgGuLF9iUJA

Southfield Town Center: https://goo.gl/maps/sz3UCPvo1s89Fztq5

A sore thumb graveyard in Southfield: https://goo.gl/maps/B7dnz2TtC7c869N47

Two thumbs up in Southfield: https://goo.gl/maps/TmMvNWRAAgu49s186

My favorite suburban Detroit sore thumb is more like a middle finger to urban development: https://goo.gl/maps/b2g2ix4Da7oeFZqE9

This is within Chicago city limits, but very isolated:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6937...7i16384!8i8192

And Wilson Hall must have been more impressive before the suburbs made it out to Fermilab:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8408...7i10240!8i5120

A highrise with surface parking. Jesus christ.

Most suburban towers in Toronto are in large clusters, but these new towers in Vaughan do have a sore thumb quality for now, although many additional new towers are going up all around the area now, so the sore thumb effect will be short lived.

https://goo.gl/maps/5r6HKgdCGQ83PHwe9

Now called Cityplex Towers the tallest is 648 ft tall. Oral Roberts University is in the foreground.

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.town...ize=1200%2C935

https://tulsaworld.com/lifestyles/or...6132b34fb.html

From across the river you can also see the nearby 28 story River Spirit casino hotel tower
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.town...ize=1200%2C800

https://tulsaworld.com/archive/flyin...886ab5d6c.html

^ Excellent example of a "suburban sore thumb". :tup:

Orel Roberts University, including the cityplex towers, has some truly strange and magnificent architecture.

I've personally never seen those buildings as "sore thumbs". But maybe being used to using the NJ Turnpike, I never saw them as sticking out so much. I expect to see highrises here and there. These are not terribly tall, either. To me, in North Jersey, this building is more of a sore thumb.

I see those buildings you mentioned more as the natural product of "exit-oriented development", like transit-oriented development. Land next to an exit is going to have a high value, necessitating building upward. It reminds me of this development on the edge of Toronto.

It all kind of looks like the Tomorrowland area of Disneyland to me. Like you said, strange, but fascinating even if I can't stand Roberts' beliefs.

For the Bay Area, two immediately come to mind:

In Emeryville, est. 2019 population 12,068, there's Pacific Park Plaza, a residential tower of 318 ft. and 30 stories that definitely sticks out like a sore thumb despite a smattering of mid-rises on the nearby bay shore:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...tshore_Fwy.jpg
source: wikipedia

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...istie_Park.jpg
source: wikipedia

And in Campbell, est. 2019 population 41,793, there's the rather curiously-scaled Pruneyard towers, the tallest of which is 256 ft. tall with 18 stories. The tallest tower in Silicon Valley until 1996, it really stands out in such a suburban environment:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ard_towers.jpg
source: wikipedia

https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/8/m...63797_54_3.jpg
source

This might not count (unless you stretch the definition of suburban Springfield to its max), but if we're doing Oral Roberts...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdoRFWtW...pg&name=medium
source

Not as tall, but seriously conspicuous out there in the middle of the Pioneer Valley, Umass Amherst's Du Bois Library always put a smile on my face. 300 feet, 30 stories tall. It was the world's tallest library when it was topped off in 1969. And back when I was there, the word was that Whitey Bulger was hiding out in the top 2 floors, which were mysteriously closed once his brother William Bulger became Umass' President.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.2295...7i16384!8i8192


These two towers in Oxnard always seemed odd. One is 25 stories maybe?

Blue Hill Plaza - Pearl River, NY.

https://42floors.com/images/H02c2e1d...98e7ad841250d7

https://42floors.com/us/ny/pearl-river/1-blue-hill-plz

Sheraton Hotel - Mahwah, NJ

https://live.staticflickr.com/3011/1...e6b0a3b5_b.jpg
Sheraton Mahwah Hotel by Martin Jones, on Flickr

The taller Morgan Stanley building in Oxnard is 300ft, 22 floors. The City National Bank Building is just over 200ft, 14 floors.

For NJ, 2 Tower Center Blvd in East Brunsiwck comes to mind.

Its right off Turnpike exit 9.

https://njbiz.com/files/2015/12/AR-151209815.jpg
Credit: https://njbiz.com/east-brunswicks-tw...-for-60m-plus/


Here's the streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en...px8wE3oECBMQBg

Some of these SoCal Indian casinos look ridiculous out in the middle of nowhere:

https://goo.gl/maps/G69RJBW8Zs6W9iuP7
https://goo.gl/maps/t3TdeCgN96WtKMqZA ("tallest in Riverside county")
https://goo.gl/maps/4Bx6XLef57Ac8z2t7
https://goo.gl/maps/nfJC3iNjNEth8eHq8
https://goo.gl/maps/7sxWjbcDepzWYqeH9

Nashville's suburban office areas are generally midrise, but there is one building that, although it clocks in at just under 200 feet only, sticks out like a sore thumb as a result. This one does differ from most of these other examples because it's in the small but historic downtown Murfreesboro rather than an office park:

https://www.emporis.com/images/show/...ine-street.jpg

Right, most of Metro Detroit highrise development over the last 50 years would qualify. IMO the former American Motors World HQ in Southfield is the worst, but there are lots of examples. The Chrysler World HQ is also absurd, way out in Auburn Hills. And there's a random highrise condo tower in St. Clair Shores.

Copenhagen Carlsberg Tower:

https://goo.gl/maps/bicapguHRMRzDc3d9

https://www.shl.dk/wp-content/upload...1-1170x878.jpg

Gothenburg Karlatornet (u/c, tallest in the Nordics at 245m)

https://www.fastighetsvarlden.se/wp-...2740724857.jpg

Southfield and Troy both have clusters of office/residential towers so I don't feel like this is akin to the OP's example where he specifically excluded places like Shaumberg.

True, Big Beaver Rd. in Troy is really a defined, linear office district. It even has some half-hearted urban gestures, like benches, and urban-style sidewalks. Functionally, it's total sprawl, but it isn't exactly towers in a cornfield.

And Southfield has its most impressive tower cluster in a very small geography, called Southfield Town Center. Not at all walkable, but most of the towers are connected. It's kind of a suburban version of the Renaissance Center.

The twin "towers" of Hoover's Riverchase Galleria (outside Birmingham, AL) immediately came to mind:

Google Streetview - Riverchase Galleria

Yeah, the FCA HQ is probably the best example of a tower in a cornfield in all of Metro Detroit.

It's not exactly towers in a cornfield, but they're still ridiculous since almost all of them are surrounded by surface parking. At least in car-centric high rise districts like Atlanta's Buckhead or Miami don't waste space by building a high rise in the middle of a gigantic parking lot.

Wow! This is a spectacular tower.

They seemed even odder back in the late 1980s when I was going to school at UC Santa Barbara, when going up the 101, it looked like two office towers in the middle of strawberry fields. The effect has lessened somewhat, as generic-looking suburban development surrounds these towers now. There also seem to be more freeway overpasses in that area now than back in the late 1980s.

I remember at the time, a guy at UCSB (who was from Oxnard) telling me that they were the tallest buildings between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I wonder if that was true, and I wonder if it still is?

Mesa, AZ has one. It sits all by itself. Just north of the Superstition Freeway.
https://goo.gl/maps/8sBijJPx8eLRpTpM6
https://goo.gl/maps/8GkZtjyDmJTpysg16

It's in a regional mall/shopping district from the 1980s that has entering the redevelopment life cycle stage. Most of the stores have shuttered in the area. It's a nice looking building about 3 miles outside of Mesa's small downtown with rail connections and about 15-20 miles from Central Phoenix.

Martin Tower - HQ of Bethlehem Steel (demolished 2019)
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
- at 332 ft. was tallest building in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh

https://www.chicagotribune.com/resiz...5LXZKRCWSA.jpg

https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/...ehem_steel.jpg

The ~450 foot tall Seminole Hard Rock Casino Guitar Tower in suburban Hollywood, FL. Looks pretty out of place from the street (would probably look out of place anywhere): https://www.google.com/maps/@26.0466...7i16384!8i8192

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...76cf880e_b.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/yariks...to/49175845857

Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, FL. You can see the light beams for miles at night from this 450ft tall suburban hotel. This one sticks out like a sore guitar :cool:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/10...2001061240.jpg
https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/de...ar-hotel-1.png

guess we were both thinking of it at the same time :haha:

^ Looks like they cheaped out on the neck!

I know, right?

It cuts against every notion of skyscrapers being "machines that make the land pay".

Like how did the pitch go down to the investors?

"Ok, so here's the plan, we're gonna buy 30 acres of land out in some random burb, and we'll take 1 acre of it and build an extremely expensive 400' office tower on it.

The other 29 acres? SURFACE PARKING!!!"

Florida always manages to out Florida itself.

It's obviously totally ridiculous, but I kinda love that Hard Rock guitar hotel. It's very Vegas -- which Florida seems to want to be more and more each day.

I wanna go there and party with washed-up '80s hard rock superstars.

This office building in the Montreal suburb of Vaudreuil is pretty much the definition of a sore thumb:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.41287...7i16384!8i8192

Fun fact, it was ConSec's headquarters in the 1981 movie Scanners by David Cronenberg (great movie)

https://i.postimg.cc/gJHN6k4P/origin...s-building.png

Would the Morongo Casino in Cabazon, CA count? Once you hit Indio on the westbound 10, you're basically driving through suburbia until the LA basin.

Yeah but it's still the only highrise around for quite a long time. It definitely stands out when you're driving to Palm Springs, and it, along with the giant windmills, are the indicators that I've entered the desert and officially left LA.

The case of Wilson Hall at Fermilab at least kind of makes sense... that way everybody can be closer together for better collaboration/seminar culture without walking long distances. So in the case of the office building being all one company, I can seeit making sense.

Out in the northeast exurbs of Cincinnati, there's a tower that was built as part of the Fujitec NA headquarters. It's basically a giant obelisk with a blue roof, and as a kid, I'd look for it as the sign that we were getting fairly close to home when traveling back from roadtrips. At the time at least, everything around it was forested, so you'd just see this lone blue obelisk sticking up through the trees on the side of the highway.

https://img.geocaching.com/waymarkin...d3eb93f5da.jpg

view from I-71:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.3842...2!8i6656?hl=en

Chicago is so centralized it doesn't make logistical sense to have buildings taller than 7-10 stories in most of the metro area.

the unfinished majesty building in suburban orlando comes to mind. (altamonte springs)
https://i.imgur.com/eIfKWpRl.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty_Building

for atl... definitely the abandoned presidential hotel along 85/285, recently used in zombieland 2.
https://i.imgur.com/fl2mUwil.png
https://sheednomics.blogspot.com/201...spaghetti.html

Turning Stone Casino Hotel in Verona NY (outside Utica NY) and tallest building between Buffalo and Albany

https://pacelink.com/wp-content/uplo...tro-image3.jpg

Meanwhile in Cherokee, NC...

Harrah's Cherokee Casino

They have another one in Murphy, NC as well, but Murphy is a dark and primitive place where Google Streeview dares not venture.

The Oracle HQ in Redwood City is pretty sore thumb-ish. More like sore hand? :haha:

https://media.glassdoor.com/l/5c/d6/9e/4c/oracle-hq.jpg

https://labs.oracle.com/pls/apex/lab...CampusPANO.jpg