Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 22 and other Land Hessen, Germany Off The Beaten Path Tips

Looking up at the Eurotheum

by Nemorino , 3 more photos

The Frankfurt Skyline Countdown begins with this city's 22nd tallest building, the Eurotheum, which is often overlooked because it is just down the block from the much taller Main Tower. But in fact the two buildings look very good together, since both have a round side and a square side.

Another unusual aspect of the Eurotheum is that it incorporates parts of the facade of an earlier building that used to be on this site. You can see this earlier facade in the foreground of one of the photos.

The Eurotheum is 110 meters tall, has 31 floors, and was completed in 1999. In addition to office space, it also includes luxury apartments with all the trimmings and elaborate security precautions. And great views, I'm sure.

Address: Neue Mainzer Straße 66-68, corner of Junghofstra?e.

Second photo: Eurotheum with part of earlier facade.

Third photo: Signs at the entrance to the Eurotheum.

Fourth photo: Looking up at the Eurotheum from another angle.

As long as the tips are in Author's Order, you can simply scroll down to continue the Frankfurt Skyline Countdown.

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 21

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Updated by Nemorino

on Oct 27, 2005

IBC Tower

Frankfurt's 21st tallest building, the Investment Banking Center (IBC Tower) at Theodor-Heuss-Allee 70, was completed in 2003. It has thirty floors and is 112 meters tall.

I used to cycle right past it every day on my way to work, but I never really paid much attention to it until they started lighting it up at night with a pattern of blue, green and white lights in the windows. I think it doesn't look bad that way, and you can see it from all over town now. The idea, I think, is to attract tenants, because well over a year after completion the building is still empty.

This building is one of a group of three that make up the Investment Banking Center, which belongs to the Deutsche Bank. The other two buildings of the complex are smaller, only ten stories each.

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 20

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Updated by Nemorino

on Apr 7, 2006

Westhafen Tower and Westhafen Haus

The former West Harbour (Westhafen) on the banks of the Main River in Frankfurt has been closed off by construction site fences for several years now, making it impossible to cycle through, which was highly inconvenient for those of us who work or live in this part of town.

Now they have finally started removing the fences, so we can cycle through again and have a look, even though not all the new buildings are finished.

These two are new office buildings. The round one is the Westhafen Tower, which has 29 floors for offices and two for machinery, and the other one is Westhafen Haus, which has eight floors.

The Westhafen Tower is just over 112 meters tall, which makes it the 20th tallest building in Frankfurt.

Locally the Westhafen Tower is known as "the empty apple-wine glass" because of its appearance (it really does resemble the typical glasses that the regional drink Aeppelwoi is served in), and because in the year since it was completed they still haven't found a single tenant.

In this decade there are lots of empty offices in Frankfurt, so if your company is thinking of renting office space here you can probably get a good deal. It pays to shop around.

Update: After standing empty for one year and eight months, the Westhafen Tower has finally found its first tenant. The building was completed (at a cost of some 130 million Euros) at the end of July 2003, and has been empty ever since. But on March 31, 2005, the local papers announced that a prominent law firm has rented two of the twenty-nine floors of office space. They are planning to move in to the eighth and ninth floors of the building on July 1, 2005.

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 19

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Updated by Nemorino

on Apr 7, 2006

Japan Center

by Nemorino , 1 more photos

The Japan Center is a square building with an attractive red granite facade. It is seen here in the center of the photo, flanked by the Commerzbank Tower on the right and the Main Tower on the left.

The Japan Center is 115 meters tall, making it Frankfurt's 19th tallest building. It was completed in 1996.

The building includes a very modern and attractive conference center which can accommodate up to four hundred people in four meeting rooms called the Tokyo Room, the Osaka Room, the Kobe Room and the Kyoto Room.

Second photo: Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) ignoring the Japan Center, along with a slice of the Commerzbank Tower on the right.

Address: Taunustor 2

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 18

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Updated by Nemorino

on Apr 2, 2007

AfE-Turm on the Bockenheim Campus

The AfE-Turm is on the Bockenheim Campus of the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University. It is 116 meters tall. For the first three years of its existence, from 1972-1975, it was the tallest building in Frankfurt; now it is the 18th.

When this building was "new" I used to go there to attend sociolinguistics seminars. I put "new" in quotation marks because it never seemed new even when it was. It had a unique built-in Shabbiness Factor right from the start.

A fire in 1997 destroyed part of the 29th floor, and recently the fire department tried to have the whole building closed down as a fire hazard, which necessitated a number of expensive stopgap measures to keep it open a while longer.

There have been conflicting reports in the papers about whether or not this building will be torn down. The latest as far as I know is that the university wants to go on using it until the spring of 2010, at which point it will be demolished to make room for at least three new high-rise buildings, two of which supposedly will be residential.

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 17

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Updated by Nemorino

on Oct 27, 2005

Messe Torhaus

The Messe Torhaus ("Fairgrounds Gatehouse“) was completed in 1985 after being constructed in a record time of 13 months. It has 30 floors and is 117 meters tall, which makes it Frankfurt’s 17th tallest building.

It is on the grounds of the Frankfurt Trade Fair (Messegelände). If you go to the Frankfurt Book Fair you will probably walk through it, or ride the moving sidewalk through the glassed-in pedestrian bridge shown in the photo, to get to the international publishers in Hall 8.

Under the pedestrian bridge you can see a bit of the S-Bahn (regional railway) station Messe, which is just two stops from the central station on lines S3, S4, S5 and S6.

To me this building looks like a sandwich (or a tuning fork), but it is also described as Frankfurt’s tallest chimney, because aside from having lots of office space the building also serves as the chimney for a nearby heat and power station.

I took the photo from the Emser Bridge one day on my way to work.

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 16

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Updated by Nemorino

on Apr 7, 2006

Garden Towers with Main Tower

by Nemorino , 4 more photos

The Garden Towers were actually built in 1976, but they haven't been included in my Frankfurt Skyline Countdown up to now because they were closed for several years for reconstruction and renovation, and have just re-opened in 2005.

Evidently there are large winter gardens in there somewhere, extending over several floors, and also roof gardens, not that any of these can actually be seen from street level.

The whole building consists of two towers: Tower B has 14 floors and Tower A has 25 floors. The official height of Tower A is 127 meters, making this the sixteenth tallest building in Frankfurt am Main.

The Garden Towers are next door to the Main Tower and across the street from the Japan Center (# 19). Address: Neue Mainzer Strasse 46-50

Second photo: The Garden Towers with the Main Tower on the right and the Commerzbank Tower on the left (and a corner of the roof of the Japan Center).

Third photo: From this angle you can't really tell that the Garden Towers and the Main Tower are two separate buildings, but they are.

Fourth photo: Entrance to the Garden Towers at street level.

Fifth photo: Friedrich Schiller studiously ignoring the Garden Towers.

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 15

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Updated by Nemorino

on Oct 26, 2005

Kastor (# 28) and Pollux (# 15)

by Nemorino , 4 more photos

In ancient Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were twin brothers and inseparable warriors. Their sister, Helen, was the cause of the Trojan War. The constellation Gemini, or the Heavenly Twins (the third sign of the Zodiac), was named after Castor and Pollux.

In Frankfurt there are two buildings named after these two brothers. The larger building is Pollux, which is 130 meters tall and was completed in 1997. It is currently Frankfurt's 15th tallest building.

Along with Kastor, which is a somewhat smaller building nearby, Pollux belongs to a new complex called Forum Frankfurt. Among other things, they are noted for having a high-speed supercomputer which makes it possible for normal single-unit PCs to be replaced by access terminals at every workplace. Rumor has it that a third building was planned for this complex, but was not allowed by the City of Frankfurt.

To make room for Pollux and Kastor, two earlier high-rise buildings (which used to be the headquarters of the German railway system before it moved to Berlin) were demolished. The larger of the two was blown up by explosives on a Sunday morning; I remember watching this on television at the time.

Additional photos: Pollux, from various angles.

Address: Platz der Einheit 3

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 14

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Updated by Nemorino

on Apr 7, 2006

Gallileo Tower from the roof of the

Main Tower

by Nemorino , 2 more photos

The Gallileo Tower, Frankfurt's 14th tallest building, was completed in 2003. It actually consists of two "towers" -- the north tower is 130 meters tall, the south tower is 114 meters and the connecting core is 136 meters.

Gallileo is located across the street from the Eurotower, which is occupied by the European Central Bank, not far from the Frankfurt Opera.

The base of the Gallileo Tower is where you can find the new home of the English Theatre.

The Gallileo replaced one of the early Frankfurt high-rise buildings, the twelve-story Zinsserturm, which was built in 1951 and torn down in 1996.

Second photo: Gallileo Tower, with the Silver Tower on the left and Skyper on the right.

Third photo: Schiller ignoring the Gallileo Tower.

I assume the Gallileo Tower was named after the Italian astronomer, mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), even though the spelling doesn't quite match.

(At the bottom of my Augsburg intro page I mentioned the play The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht.)

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Off The Beaten Path: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, # 13

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Updated by Nemorino

on Oct 27, 2005

City-Haus