Origin story behind Nashville’s original skyscraper: the L&C tower
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — It was called the Life and Casualty Building and it’s the very first skyscraper in Nashville .
The L & C tower has been standing tall over Music City for 67 years and while once prominent, it is now shrouded by bigger, newer construction.
News 2’s Neil Orne looks back at a building that was ahead of its time as it even forecast the weather.
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Thirty-seven years before the AT&T Batman Building became a defining feature, the L&C tower dominated the Nashville skyline. For eight years after its completion in 1957, it was the state’s tallest building.
Now, nearly seven decades later, the Life and Casualty Building is swallowed by skyscrapers growing from every downtown block.
From the top of Nashville Yards’ new 35-story Pinnacle Tower, which will open later this year as they city’s largest ever office building, the 500-foot tall L&C tower is hidden.
“You ride downtown now and it’s like going through Grand Canyon, because everywhere you look up the structures around you,” explained Nashville architecture pioneer, Phil Ponder.
But go back, when the L&C sat as the state’s tallest building, dwarfing all that surrounded it. To Nashville, it was actually a vital source of information.
“The L&C told the weather, if it’s going to be hot, the next day, they were red letters, it was gonna be cold, they were blue letters, and they went up and down depending on where the temperature was going up or down. So it was the weather forecast at the top of the L&C,” recalled Ponder.
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Those two letters and the lighting, updated hourly, let Nashvillians know not current conditions, but the actual forecast.
The tower was designed by famed architect Edwin A. Keeble is more than a modernism style of limestone, granite and green glass windows. Keeble, with help from a Vanderbilt astronomer, created ridges along the sides that resulted in substantial energy savings, deflecting sunlight long before conservation was cool.
Now, the L&C no longer dominates Nashville’s changing skyline, but it should be appreciated for setting the city on the course it is now on and will always provide dramatic views as one stands at it base taking in the impressive sight.
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