Already forgotten, the abandoned Houston building hiding in plain sight downtown will soon be gone

In the middle of the Bank of America Center at 700 Louisiana Street in downtown Houston sits an abandoned building.

According to the website swamplot.com, for 35 years, this building stood in this location, much of the time unused.

At one point, the property served as the switching center for Western Union.

When the rest of the plaza was built in 1982, architect Philip Johnson designed his new building around the current one.

This may be because the cables and electrical equipment used in the switching center were too expensive to remove.

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But it won’t be there for long:

Bank of America will be relocating to Skansa’s Capitol Tower building, and, when it goes, it will dismantle what’s left of the old Western Union switching center completely.

This will allow developers to gain another 35,000 square feet of space on which to build without actually expanding the building.

The old part of the building is in the lobby of the 12-story bank facing Louisiana street, across from the much larger tower in the same plaza.

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It’s just on the other side of the bank lobby wall on the right-hand side entering from Louisiana.