Leaning Tower of Dallas

The building was built in 1971 and was the Southland Corporation Office Tower. It later became the Affiliated Computer Services building until Xerox acquired them and then Xerox took ownership of it. The building was later acquired by De La Vega Development. It was a concrete office building located at 2828 North Haskell Avenue. It had 11 stories and was 47.9 m / 157 ft tall[2]. The reason why the core did not collapse with the rest of building was explained by Thomas Taylor, the principal design engineer. He said, "[It had] a cast-in-place concrete core, we call it a slip-form concrete core. And that became the stabilizing element for the building. So it's sort of like the tree trunk of a tree. I mean, what came off is all the branches and the leaves. But the tree trunk is a little harder to bring down than the branches[3]."

On February 16, 2020 Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition used 300 pounds of dynamite to demolish the building to make room for a $2.5 billion mixed-use project by De La Vega Development for that property[4]. The entire building collapsed except the core which housed the elevator shaft and stairwell. The core collapsed slightly at its base then just stopped falling. The core ended up stabilizing with a slight lean. According to Artemio De La Vega, CEO of De La Vega Development, "The core settled into the basement probably, approximately...I'd say 35 to 40 feet down into the basement, which is basically what is holding the tower."[5]

After the demolition, Dallas-based Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition, said they had a multistep plan to bring down the rest of the building. They planned on using a combination of a wrecking ball to destroy the upper portion of the core and a high-reach excavator to knock down the rest of it.[6]. On February 24 they began the new phase of demolition. When the wrecking ball hit the building it appeared to do no damage at all. The wrecking ball was about 3.5 feet tall and weighed 5,600 pounds, giving it a tiny appearance in photos and videos as it swung into the building. Local journalists, observers and admirers made fun of the slow-moving process on social media[7]. After two weeks of hitting the tower with the wrecking ball, it finally came down into a pile of rubble on March 3[8].

A man posing with the Leaning Tower of Dallas

Its height and location by downtown Dallas made it very visible to people living in the area and to commuters. People quickly noticed the awkward structure and started taking photos with it and posting them all over social media. Inspired by Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa, many people posted photos of themselves pretending to hold up the tilted tower[9]. Numerous memes were created and posted on the various social medias about the tower, including on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Most of the memes made light of the tower's refusal to fall despite the demolition attempts[10]