Look straight ahead and you’ll spot a tall, modern skyscraper with narrow, gleaming vertical windows rising above an open, elevated white base, standing proudly at the corner of Stone Avenue and Pennington Street.
Picture yourself in Tucson back in 1977-bell bottoms, disco, and suddenly, this gleaming giant called the Bank of America Plaza shoots up into the sky! It was taller than anything else around, stealing the spotlight from the Pima County Legal Services Building, which must have felt like an older sibling getting outgrown overnight. Architects Friedman & Jobusch wanted to build something you couldn’t miss, and with DEFCO Construction on the job, they made sure you’d spot this building from all over downtown. For almost a decade, it was Tucson’s tallest, giving everyone else a serious case of “building envy” until One South Church finally topped it in 1986.
But the real drama started years later. You’d think a big money bank like Bank of America would live here forever, but after their lease ran out in 2017, they packed up and left-no dramatic heist, just paperwork. Now, Pima County owns the building, and it’s often just called by its address. Standing here now, you can almost feel the whiff of ’70s ambition and the whispers of new beginnings as Tucson’s skyline changed shape forever. Who knew a bank building could outgrow even the banks themselves?
