Frost Bank Tower

Skyscraper in Austin Texas
the skyscraper in Austin

After Austin's skyscraper construction boom, which began in 2007, Frost Bank Tower was soon surpassed in height by the 360 Condominiums at 581 feet (177 m) in 2008. As of March 2011, it is the 54th tallest building in Texas. Currently, there are many notable tenants in the building, including Frost Bank, Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, PIMCO, UTIMCO, and Heritage Title Co.

Designed by Duda/Paine Architects, LLP with HKS, Inc. as the Architect of Record, the Frost Bank Tower is considered one of the most recognizable buildings in Austin. The building starts with a rectangular shape on the ground that eventually becomes a square point in the crown. The base of the building is expressed in honed finish limestone while the main superstructure of the building is a blue low e glass skin, which is a thicker type of glass, that covers the entire tower. The Frost Bank Tower is one of only two places in the world with blue low e glass skin, the other being the Reuters Building in New York City, which was the earlier structure. More than 200,000 sq ft (60,960 sq m) of glass was used for the facade of the building alone and 45,000 sq ft (13,716 sq m) of glass was used in the crown. Austin American Statesman columnist John Kelso compared the building's crown to an enormous set of nose hair trimmers. Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, a Statesman art critic, opined that the "jagged form of the crown looks more like a riff on the post modern ornamentation of the 1980s than any kind of newly inspired form." The newspaper also said that the "owl face of the Frost Bank Tower" helps keep Austin "characteristically weird".

The Frost Bank Tower contains a wide variety of amenities. Such amenities in the building include conference facilities, building concierge, 24 hour cardkey access, fully equipped fitness center, state of the art telecommunication systems, tenant controlled HVAC, upscale restaurants, deli/carry out restaurants, a coffee shop, and a dry cleaner. Following the builders tradition, a tin Christian cross was embedded into the concrete of each floor during construction, with the last being added on May 27, 2003. The idea came from a story of an immigrant who worked on construction during the 1940s in New York City. Also, a 30 feet (9 m) cedar tree was hoisted to the top of the mechanical penthouse during the topping out ceremony. When it was completed, along with its location in the skyline, matched with its height, excited Austinites and was known as a centerpiece to the skyline.