archie
Sign in Get the app

Hancock Whitney Center

Year
1972
Style
International Style
City
New Orleans, LA
Collection
the french quarter
Hancock Whitney Center
Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 3.0
See it on the map

Hancock Whitney Center, known for decades as One Shell Square, is a 51-story, 697-foot tower designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and completed in 1972 at 701 Poydras Street. It is the tallest building in New Orleans and in Louisiana — taller than the state's highest natural point, Driskill Mountain. Developed by Hines Interest and Lincoln Property Company with Shell USA as its largest tenant, it was renamed Hancock Whitney Center in 2018 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places that same year.

the building

Double-tube structure. The tower is built on a double tube system, with a steel core wrapped by a concrete perimeter tube — a structural approach that let it rise 51 stories while keeping the exterior column-free for open office floors.

Travertine and bronze skin. The exterior is clad in Italian travertine limestone paired with bronze glass, giving the tower a warmer, stone-and-metal surface rather than the all-glass curtain walls common on towers of its generation.

One of a family of towers. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill used a closely related design for Houston's One Shell Plaza, Denver's Republic Plaza, and Rochester's Five Star Bank Plaza, making this tower part of a recognizable family of SOM office towers built for Shell and other corporate clients.

the style

Designed in the International Style, the tower's steel-and-concrete double-tube structure and travertine-and-bronze-glass skin are typical of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's corporate office towers of the early 1970s.

More on International Style

the architect

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed this tower alongside closely related towers in Houston, Denver, and Rochester, applying the same double-tube structural formula to each.

significance

It is the tallest building in both New Orleans and Louisiana. Renamed Hancock Whitney Center in 2018, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the same year.

nearby

All 38 buildings in New Orleans