#leveque tower

Leveque Tower - Columbus, Ohio - 1988

The American Insurance Union Citadel, located at 50 West Broad Street at the corner of Front Street, was designed by architect C. Howard Crane in the Art Deco style with touches of a more modern version of the Byzantine.  The 47-story tall skyscraper, designed mainly as office space, rises to an elevation of 555.5 feet, and was built to be 6 inches taller than the Washington Monument.  Two 18-story wings flank the building; on the east, the 4,000 seat Keith-Albee Theater (now the Palace Theater), and on the west the 600 room Deshler-Wallick Hotel.  The steel-frame building, completed in 1927 at a cost of $7,800,000, was the first building in Ohio to be erected on a caisson foundation.  It was the fifth tallest building in the world for a time, and the tallest building in the city until 1974. Due to the Great Depression the American Insurance Union went bankrupt, and sold the building.  The tower was purchased by John Lincoln and Leslie L. LeVeque in 1945. LeVeque was the designer of an automatic pinsetter for bowling which became known as the Columbus pinsetter. The Lincoln-LeVeque Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and in 1977, the name was officially changed to the LeVeque Tower. The building changed hands to Lennar Properties in 2004, and then again to the new owners Finsilver/Friedman Management, a Michigan based regional developer and property manager. 

The LeVeque Tower and Downtown skyline in purple for the NCAA Women's Final Four in Columbus, Ohio.

Downtown Columbus in green for St. Patrick’s Day.

composition with LeVeque Tower