The GULF REFINING COMPANY BUILDING - Pittsburgh, PA
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YONEYAMA
N 40° 26.535 W 079° 59.705
17T E 585223 N 4477329
The Gulf refining company building, now "Gulf Tower", is a 44-story, 177.4 m (582 ft) Art Deco skyscraper in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Waymark Code: WM18PF7
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 09/05/2023
Views: 0
3. The GULF REFINING COMPANY BUILDING (tower open 9-5 weekdays), NW. corner Grant St. and 7th Ave., is a modern skyscraper completed in 1932. This massive 42-story tower is the tallest building in Pittsburgh. The exterior walls of the first two stories are of New England granite, the upper part of Indiana limestone. The top is a pyramid illuminated by hidden floodlights. The architects were Trowbridge, Libingstone, and E.P.Mellon, of New York.
The Gulf Building marks the site where the petroleum industry in the United States was born. Oil from the sale wells of Lewis Peterson near Tarentum was first sold as a lubricant to a local cotton mill in 1845; in 1849 Samuel Kier began marketing crude oil from his salt well as a cure-all. Later he operated the first oil refinery in the country at this corner, producing 'carbon oil'.
From the Historic Pittsburgh web site
The Gulf Building (also known as the Gulf Tower), located at Seventh Avenue and Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh, was designed by the architectural firm of Trowbridge & Livingston in 1930-32. The building is forty-four stories (582 feet) in height and was the tallest building in Pittsburgh until 1970. Mounted on the top of the structure were neon tubes in the Gulf Oil corporate colors of orange and blue that predicted the weather. If the neon lights were a steady blue color, then precipitation and falling temperatures were expected; flashing blue, precipitation and falling temperatures. A steady orange corresponded to clear and rising temperatures; flashing orange, clear and falling temperatures. After Gulf Oil merged with Chevron in 1985 the building was no longer associated with the oil industry. The building was sold in 1985 to New York developers who converted the structure to office rental space.