Safeco Plaza, Seattle

Safeco Plaza, the oldest skyscraper in downtown Seattle, is a 50-story tower rising 630 feet (or 192 meters) above the city. Locals sometimes refer to it as “the box the Space Needle came in,” a nickname reflecting its stark, rectilinear form. When it was completed in the late 1960s, the building dramatically reshaped Seattle’s skyline, surpassing the long-dominant Smith Tower, which had held the height record since the early 20th century. Safeco Plaza also exceeded the height of the Space Needle-built a few years earlier at Seattle Center-by roughly 25 feet (or 7.6 meters), making it the tallest structure in the city at the time. It retained that distinction for sixteen years, until the completion of Columbia Center in the mid-1980s.

The bronze-colored aluminum and glass structure was the first modern class-A office building in Seattle and is the first skyscraper in the world to feature a Vierendeel "space frame" capable of transferring and resisting bending moments. At the ground level there is a two-story lobby as well as other amenities including 15,000 square feet (1,400 square meters) of ground-floor retail that features a fitness center, a bank, some restaurants, a medical center, and a post office.

Just outside, a definite highlight is Henry Moore's abstract bronze creation, "Vertebrae 1968" – the British artist's amazing three-part sculpture with three interlocking elements inspired by bones or flints. It was cast in edition of four; the others three are at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Landesbausparkasse in Münster, with the artist's copy at the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Hertfordshire.