CN Tower

CN Tower is an office tower in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It stands at 111 metres (364 ft) or 26 storeys tall, and was built and formerly owned by the Canadian National Railway Company. At the time of its construction it was the first skyscraper in Edmonton, and the tallest building in Western Canada. Its reign as Western Canada's tallest building lasted from 1966 to 1971, when it was surpassed by Edmonton House.

History

The building site was once the home to the CNR Edmonton station c. 1905 as well as the 1928 addition. The former was demolished in 1953 and latter gave way to the CN Tower in 1966.

Former railway station that was demolished to make way for the tower.

Designed by Abugov & Sunderland, it was western Canada's tallest office tower when completed in 1966. It is now owned by Calgary-based Strategic Group, and the last remaining CN employees moved out of the building in 2008. The CN logo is still found over the main entrance and on the top of the building.

Built to overlook the old Canadian National rail yard, the building's basement once housed Edmonton's main passenger railway station, until the Canadian National railway tracks leading to Downtown Edmonton were removed in 1998. Since then, passenger trains serving Edmonton have stopped at the Edmonton railway station situated near the then active Edmonton City Centre Airport (shut down in 2013).

The building suffered structural damage to the exterior on July 18, 2009, during a severe thunderstorm. Two vehicles were crushed by the falling debris at the base of the building.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "CN Tower (Edmonton)" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.