A 1956 skyscraper on the soft bed of a drained lake in an earthquake zone, which is still standing because of how it was built.
Completed in 1956, 182 metres and 44 storeys, and for years the tallest building in Latin America.
Its significance is engineering rather than height.
The problem
Mexico City sits on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco, on soft, water-saturated clay up to fifty metres deep. It is also in a seismically active region, and that clay amplifies seismic waves rather than damping them — the ground can oscillate for minutes.
Building a skyscraper on it was widely considered impossible.
The solution
The engineer Leonardo Zeevaert, with Adolfo Zeevaert and consulting from Nathan Newmark, designed a deep pile foundation reaching to a firm sand layer 33 metres down, combined with a steel frame designed to flex rather than resist, and a system that allowed the building to be re-levelled as the surrounding ground sank around it.
It worked. In the 1957 earthquake the tower was undamaged while buildings around it fell. In the 1985 earthquake — magnitude 8.0, which killed thousands and destroyed a great deal of the city — it again came through with essentially no structural damage, and was the tallest building in the world to have withstood a quake of that size.
It received an award from the American Institute of Steel Construction for it. In a city where the ground itself is the problem, that is worth a visit on its own.
The observation deck
Floors 37 to 44, with an indoor level, an open-air terrace at the top and a bar.
The view is the best in the historic centre — straight down onto the orange-tiled dome of Bellas Artes, along the Alameda, over the Zócalo, and on a clear day out to the volcanoes.
There is a small museum on floor 38 about the building and the city’s history.
The Sears café
On the eighth floor of the Sears building directly across the road is a café with a terrace looking at Bellas Artes and the tower together. It is the source of the most-reproduced photograph in Mexico City, it costs the price of a coffee, and there is often a queue.
Practicalities
Ticketed, open late — until around ten at night, which makes the lit city an option.
Bellas Artes metro is two minutes away.
Air quality varies enormously; the view on a bad day is a haze. Mornings are generally clearer than afternoons.
More Landmarks
The Zócalo and the Cathedral
One of the largest squares in the world, laid out on the ceremonial centre of Tenochtitlan, with a cathedral built from its stones.
Palacio de Bellas Artes
An Art Nouveau exterior around an Art Deco interior, with murals by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros and a Tiffany glass curtain.
Castillo de Chapultepec
The only royal castle in the Americas, on a hill that was sacred to the Aztecs, holding the national history museum.