The Half-Scale World Trade Center Tower
Wednesday, 3rd December 2008 by John Andresen
In Tulsa, Oklahoma you can see the Bank of Oklahoma tower, which is a near-exact half-scale replica of the World Trade Center towers in New York City which were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.
Completed three years after the WTC in 1976, the Bank of Oklahoma was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who was in fact the architect who designed the original.
Like in New York, Yamasaki had proposed a pair1 of towers, but for some reason only one was ever built.
At 52 stories and 203 metres tall, the Bank of Oklahoma tower it is almost exactly half of the World Trade Center's 110 stories and 415 metres, but is still the tallest tower in Oklahoma.
Does anyone else have any replicas of famous buildings to share?
Wikipedia has more on the Bank of Oklahoma tower, and believermag.com has the full story of the building. Thanks to Kottke.
-
Or possibly a quartet, if you believe Wikipedia at this point in time. ↩︎
Well, there are a bunch of replicas of the Eiffel Tower: here’s a list from the Wikipedia article.
@Esme Cowles: the difference is you can still see the original Eiffel Tower, no need for a replica.
Oddly enough – here is a replica that one would not expect.
If you travel a little north and then west from the post the other day of the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana Cuba, you will find the “Capitolio” bldg. Modeled after the American Capitol bldg in Washington DC
Obviously this predates the 1959 Cuban revolution
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=23.134973,-82.359438&z=17
In Seattle you can see another smaller version of the WTC Towers, the IBM Building. This was probably Yamasaki’s first building in this style: View Placemark
An diagonally opposite is Yamasaki’s much later Rainier Tower: View Placemark
So Seattle does have fraternal twin towers at least.
The Rainier Tower is unusual in that it sits atop a narrow pedestal – check out the street view!
There’s another Yamasaki building in the US, not a replica…perhaps a variation on a theme. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, check it out: View Placemark,,0,-31.25450009926487
Nashville has an exact replica of The Parthenon and the statue of Athena in Greece.
N 36° 08.999 W 086° 48.771 16S E 516835 N 4000600
I lived near one of these White House replicas: http://www.homesoftherich.net/2008/10/replica-white-houses.html
View Placemark
There are the two “twin towers” in century city (Los Angeles). They’re triangular in shape and are designed by Yamasaki:
View Placemark,,0,-28.38038767733199
View Placemark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Plaza_Towers
No need for a replica for any (maybe the WTC but yeah…) so there really isn’t a need for replica