Chase Tower rises 40 stories at 201 North Central Avenue in Phoenix, right in front of you. Opened in 1972 and designed by architects Welton Becket and Fred M. Guirey, it was built for Valley National Bank and later carried the names Valley Bank Center and Bank One Center before becoming Chase Tower in December 2005 after Chase’s merger with Bank One; Bank One had merged with Valley National Bank in 1992. At 483 ft (147 m), it is the tallest building in Arizona.
You can feel the scale: though the tower has 40 stories, the highest occupiable floor is the 38th, and there was once a public observation area on the 39th floor that was closed during redevelopment and construction on the upper floors. The building occupies an entire city block in the Central Avenue Corridor, an economic and residential region of Downtown Phoenix. From here you’ll notice the unusual footprint — similar to a three-leaf clover with a stem — the stem being the narrow elevator core on the southern facade with its rough, concrete texture.
Notice that clover-shaped massing, the rough concrete stem on the south facade, and how the tower anchors this full city block.