GPS City GuideWinston-Salem100 North Main Street

Stop 20 of 32 · Winston-Salem audio walking tour

100 North Main Street

Winston-Salem · 1995 · Wachovia's New Corporate Tower

What you'll hear here: about a minute of narration about 100 North Main Street, and how it fits Winston-Salem, written to be listened to on the spot rather than read at home.

Locals call 100 North Main Street the Winston Weiner, Phallus Palace, or simply The Penis Building, though its formal names are Wells Fargo Center and, originally, Wachovia Center. Rising 460 feet (140 m) with 34 floors, this tower served as the corporate headquarters of Wachovia bank from 1995, the year of the tower's erection, to 2001, when the corporation merged with First Union and moved its headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina. Designed by César Pelli, the architect behind the Petronas Towers, the tower weaves Moravian architectural themes into its form: the Moravian arch informs the dome and the Moravian star appears in the lobby mosaics.

Pelli said the design resembled a rosebud about to bloom. Sheathed in Olympia white granite, it is the only granite-domed skyscraper in the world, the stone coming from a single quarry in Sardinia. It remains the tallest building in the Piedmont Triad region and was the tallest in the Carolinas outside Charlotte until 2008, when RBC Plaza, now PNC Plaza, was completed in Raleigh.

Picture the white granite dome above and the Moravian star mosaics in the lobby below.

Where it is

Coordinates
36.0954, -80.24408
Area
Winston-Salem
Era
1995 · Wachovia's New Corporate Tower
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Three stops free. No account needed. The audio plays itself as you walk.