With a certain bulb-shaped observation tower in the news again, perhaps now is a good time to revisit another seminal observation tower project: The Welton Becket and Associates-designed Reunion Tower in Dallas, Texas. 

Crafted as a three-story, lightbulb-studded geodesic dome hoisted atop a series of monolithic poured-in-place concrete piers, Reunion Tower is among one of the more iconic elements of Dallas’s eclectic and neon-lit skyline. The tower rises to 561-feet in height and is topped in part by a panoramic restaurant designed to revolve around the building’s axis once every 55 minutes, creating one of the more remarkable—and still fully functional—high points of 1970s-era architecture. The restaurant, Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck, according to its website, offers diners “floor-to-ceiling windows offering 360-degree views of the city from the dramatic, revolving dining room.”

Like a New Year’s Eve ball that never drops, the orb lights up the Dallas sky every night, sometimes in a variety of festive colors, its 260 light bulbs flashing a series of computer-generated patterns to animate the skyline. According to Dallas Skyscrapers, the uppermost, publically-accessible observation areas span three floors and include a lower “lookout” level that’s topped by the aforementioned revolving restaurant, and, at the apex of the tower, a revolving cocktail lounge. 

The Dallas Business Journals reports that the tower was a relative latecomer in the revolving-observation tower arms race of the 1960s and 1970s, with Seattle (Space Needle, 1962), San Antonio (Tower of the Americas, 1968), and Los Angeles (Bonaventure Hotel, 1976) all completing similar projects before Dallas. 

But none are as dynamic or evocative as Reunion Tower. 

While the Space Needle is 44-feet taller, for example, only the Reunion Tower can glow in a rich orange light during the Halloween season in order to resemble a giant, sky-high Jack-O-Lantern. The Tower of the Americas in San Antonio might be even taller still—750-feet—and is designed by O’Neil Ford, the only human ever to be designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Council of the Arts, but only Reunion Tower is known as a “Spanish-style exclamation point,” a reference to tower’s resemblance to the upside-down exclamation mark used in the language. 

Flanked by a Y-shaped, black mirrored glass-wrapped 1,120-room Hyatt Regency Dallas hotel—also designed by Becket—and located on the edge of the city’s downtown by Interstate-35, the observation tower was crafted as a cultural attraction that could revitalize the city’s international image. Today, the tower stands as a testament to the strange and wonderful architecture of the 1970s. 

“We use the terms ‘iconic’ and ‘futuristic’ when describing Reunion Tower,” Reunion Tower President Dusti Groskreut told Dallas Business Journals in 2018, adding, “It can seem that those words have opposite sentiments. In reality, we are responsible for ensuring that generations to come can experience the 360-degree view in new and exciting way, while at the same time we are trusted with the legacy of what the Tower means to the definition of ‘Dallas.’”