Northwestern Bell Telephone Building (now Lumen Technologies Building)

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Lumen Technologies Building
formerly Bell Telephone Building
224 S 5th St.

Architects: Hewitt and Brown, 1932

The Northwestern Bell Building (later renamed the Qwest Building; then the Century Link Building; and now the Lumen Technologies Building) was built to house not just administration, but the human operators and equipment then needed to make phone calls happen. Slightly shorter than the Foshay Tower, this was for many years the city’s second tallest building.

The building features hallmarks of the Zig Zag Moderne style, including soaring piers of Kasota stone (quarried near Mankato, Minnesota) that alternate with window groups to accentuate verticality. Dark marble on the lower story provides an image of solidity to anchor the tower above. The upper floors step back in the manner of a Pre-Columbian pyramid or Babylonian Ziggurat. Contrasting with the Rand Tower, which features ornament based on aviation technology, the ornamentation here is classic Zig Zag Modern with geometrically faceted eagles and lightening bolts. The building was capped for many years by a “crown” made up of microwave radio antennae. These have been removed, restoring the building’s original pyramidal appearance.