Cullen Center

Cullen Center is a skyscraper complex in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. The complex is now managed by Brookfield Properties. Previously Trizec Properties owned all four office buildings. The complex includes the headquarters of the Houston Fire Department and KBR, and it formerly included the headquarters of Continental Airlines.

The buildings include 1600 Smith (formerly Continental Center I), 600 Jefferson (formerly Continental Center II), KBR Tower, and 500 Jefferson Street.

In 1959 the family of Hugh Roy Cullen, an oil businessperson and philanthropist who was recently deceased, announced that they would build a skyscraper complex in Downtown Houston. To the surprise of everyone the family planned for the 12 acres (4.9 ha), 5½ city block site to accommodate several sites. The first two buildings were to be a 500 room, 15-18 story hotel and a 25 story office building. Next, a 40-45 story office building was to be completed. Other buildings were planned to be added at later times. Gerald E. Veitmann, president of the Cullen Center, said that it was going to be "a memorium to Mr. and Mrs. Cullen, an investment in excess of 100 million dollars," and "to Houston what Rockefeller Center is to New York City." Work for clearing the land was scheduled to begin in December 1959. During the year, the family's plans also included another 25 story office building and a parking garage. Construction of the Cullen Center, which was planned to have around one dozen buildings, was scheduled to begin on October 1, 1960, with the first building being a 21-story office building with an attached parking garage.

Welton Beckett and Associates master planned the first two buildings, the 21 story, $12 million 500 Jefferson and the 12-story, $6 million Hotel America. Gerald E. Veltmann, the president of Cullen Center, Inc. said that the development "represents a marked departure from the traditional downtown scene and colors" because the development "centers around a planning concept with four separate levels structures: sub surface, used for parking and mechanical equipment; surface, used for vehicular traffic, parking, entrance lobbies, and service entrances, a second level, used for pedestrian-oriented facilities such as main lobbies, shops, displays, galleries, lounges, and restaurants; and the top space, into which will rise the main towers containing hotel rooms and offices." In other words, the building design separated the pedestrian and vehicular traffic from one another. The first levels were to have open plazas. The developer planned to establish air-conditioned bridges connecting the buildings at their second levels. The architect, Welton Becket of FAIA, said that the two original buildings were "esthetically related through the use of a common material—concrete—in a variety of forms—physically related by the second-level pedestrian bridges, and visually related around open plaza parking areas and a common exposed aggregate sidewalk roads."

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