by Kaira Lai        Defying gravity for a week, an 11-story Dallas office building, Affiliated Computer Services, also known as the “Leaning Tower of Dallas,” was demolished after two weeks of pounding from a wrecking ball after becoming a part of Dallas’ pop culture. 

Demonstrating a futile attempt of the original deconstruction from the previous Sunday, this building has become an unlikely attraction for people to to prepare to say their goodbyes and snap their selfies, inspiring funny pictures. 

On February 16, demolition crews imploded the 11-story office building, but when the dust cleared, the core of the building still stood. The company that engineered the blast to take down the building said that some explosives did not go off, resulting in the still-standing core of the edifice.

On Monday, February 24, a second attempt to tear down the building included a comically small wrecking ball that viewers recognized the building wouldn’t yield to. “It’s one piece of concrete from bottom to top. It will be very difficult to tear it down,” says Mohammad Najafi, director of the University of Texas at Arlington’s construction management program. He believes that the crane would have to weigh a few hundred tons in order to make the building come down faster, but a bigger crane takes more time to set up, which results in more money spent. As a result, wrecking crews used a 5,600-pound wrecking ball to start demolishing the structure. Crews started the destruction at the top of the tower and then worked their way down over the course of three to four days, according to Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition, LLC.

“The public reaction is a testament to the fun nature of Dallasites,” says Developer Artemio De La Vega. To preserve the memory of this comical moment in history, the developer is asking people to share artwork and pictures on Instagram with the hashtag #DiscoverTheCentral. The pictures will go up in a gallery space called The Central, a 27 acre mixed-use development that will go up at that site.

Bibliography:

Last Stand: ‘Leaning Tower Of Dallas’ Slowly Coming Down By Way Of Wrecking Ball

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/leaning-towers-of-the-world/index.html