TransAmerica Pyramid

The TransAmerica Pyramid is an office tower at 600 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, designed by the architect William Pereira and completed in 1972 as the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation. Its distinctive tapering pyramidal form, unusual among American skyscrapers of its era, was intended to admit more light and air to the street below than a conventional flat-sided tower of the same floor area, and two narrow wings partway up its shaft, one holding an elevator machine room and the other a smoke tower, break the otherwise unbroken taper. At 48 stories it was the tallest building in San Francisco for decades and remains one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, despite Transamerica itself no longer occupying the building.