A demolition company failed to completely implode a high-rise office block in Dallas, Texas, leaving the city with a new landmark to rival the famous tower in Pisa.
The 11-story tower block was set for demolition on Sunday morning. Charges were placed and the explosion carried out as planned. However, while two of the building’s wings folded in on themselves and fell to the ground, its center column - home to its stairwells and elevator shafts - pitched over at an angle and stayed upright.
An excavator brought in to finish the job failed to dislodge the tower, and as of Monday afternoon, it remained standing. Demolition firm Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition told local media that the building poses no threat to pedestrians in the area, and that the operation will be finished with an old-fashioned wrecking ball during the week.
Locals quickly dubbed the new landmark “The Leaning Tower of Dallas.” One bystander told a local news channel WFAA that “while I am not a demolitions expert, it does not seem to be the most successful demolition.”
One local artist even came out to sketch the building’s skeletal remains, as thousands do in the Italian city of Pisa every year. “It’s just a peculiar, out of this world composition,” he told the news crew. “Very deconstructed, almost brutalist.”
Once the tower finally goes down, the site will be transformed into a 27-acre development, featuring glittering glass offices, hotels, and residential units as part of a construction plan expected to take four or five years. That is, unless the city chooses to keep the lopsided building as its new landmark.
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