The James A. Rhodes State Office Tower is a 41-story, state office building and skyscraper on Capitol Square in Downtown Columbus, Ohio. The Rhodes Tower is the tallest building in Columbus and the fifth tallest in Ohio. The tower is named for James A. Rhodes, the longest-serving Ohio governor, and features a statue of Rhodes outside the entrance. The building's interior includes a large open lobby with 22 elevators. Higher floors have offices for numerous state agencies. The tower's 40th floor contains an observation deck, open to the public.
The Rhodes Tower was designed by Brubaker/Brandt and Dalton, Dalton, Little, and Newport in a Modernist style. It was conceived in 1969 as a way to consolidate state offices in one building and give more space to legislative offices in the Ohio Statehouse. Construction spanned from 1971 to 1974; it has held state offices since mid-1974, including the Supreme Court of Ohio until it moved to the renovated Ohio Judicial Center in 2004. The Rhodes Tower was renovated from 2018 to 2022 for energy savings and façade maintenance.
Attributes The Rhodes State Office Tower sits on Capitol Square in Downtown Columbus, on Broad Street. It is the tallest building in Columbus, measuring tall. It is also the tallest building housing the state government. The building faces the Ohio Statehouse, the state capitol building, located to its immediate south. A bi-level tunnel connects the basements of the two buildings, with the upper level designed for pedestrians and the lower for vehicles. The building's basement contains parking for 78 cars.
, the building holds offices for the Ohio Attorney General, Ohio State Treasurer, Ohio Department of Administrative Services, Ohio Office of Budget and Management, Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Ohio Department of Taxation, the Ohio Inspector General, and the Ohio Arts Council.
Plaza The southern portion of the site has a small pedestrian plaza facing Broad Street, partially formed as the building's entrance is set back from underneath the bulk of the building. The plaza includes six trees; the six planted in 1974 were 'Moraine' honey locusts, tall.
The plaza contains a bronze statue titled Governor James A. Rhodes and depicting Jim Rhodes, Ohio's longest-serving governor and the building's namesake. The six-foot, six-inch statue was originally installed and dedicated on the northeast corner of the Ohio Statehouse grounds in 1982. It was moved to its current location in 1991 as a temporary measure amid renovation of the statehouse. Jim Rhodes was among those who preferred it at the Statehouse, though those in charge of the renovations were in support of its current placement; it remains at the foot of the tower today.
Exterior
The Rhodes Tower was designed by Brubaker/Brandt of Columbus and Dalton, Dalton, Little, and Newport of Cleveland. The skyscraper was designed in a Modernist style, sometimes characterized as Brutalist, featuring the style's characteristic heavy rectilinear masonry. The verticality of the building serves as a foil to the Ohio Statehouse across Broad Street, increasing the horizontal appearance of the Statehouse, and the glass-walled lobby reflects a mirror image of the Statehouse to pedestrians on Broad Street.
The Rhodes Tower has a complex massing and form. It includes a low asymmetrical base, reflecting the scale of the shorter buildings surrounding the tower. The lower floors of the building were designed to house the Supreme Court of Ohio; the court's chamber there is visible from the exterior with a projecting granite wall, surrounded by glass walls that further emphasize the chamber. The tower has a steel frame above a foundation of concrete-filled steel caissons. The foundation reaches below the surface to the limestone bedrock. The entire exterior of the Rhodes Tower, the surrounding sidewalk, and the lower part of the building's interior are lined with coarse-grained Milbank granite, quarried in Milbank, South Dakota by the Cold Spring Granite Company and branded as Carnelian granite. The stone is estimated to be 2 billion years old. The exterior has 13,108 granite panels, which give varying effects depending on the viewer's angle. The same stone is used on Capitol Square's Huntington Center, and a similar color on the Wyandotte Building nearby. The rich red stone intensifies the brightness of the white limestone used in the Ohio Statehouse. In 1975, the tower was claimed to be the largest granite structure on Earth. The building also has 3,144 windows with dark gray glass.
The building is topped with radio and television antennae, installed during the building's construction. The initial antennae were for the Columbus Division of Police, Columbus Division of Fire, and the Ohio Educational Television network (the latter was supported by a large circular steel structure). Also at the top of the building are air navigation beacons as well as a rooftop helicopter pad (for official and emergency use only).
The building has suffered minor maintenance issues and fires over its history. In 1989, three fires took place; one extensively damaged much of the 36th floor, with no injuries. Drinking water taste was an issue for years, leading offices to purchase five-gallon water coolers to use instead. As renovations to the building's façade began in 2017, a 12-by-2-inch piece of granite fell from the building, prompting the surrounding sidewalk to close pending an inspection. In 2015, one of the building's workers contracted Legionnaire's disease; Legionella bacteria was found at safe levels in locations throughout the building, and at a high level only in a basement shower. The water system was cleaned and health officials did not announce if they had concluded the origin of the worker's illness. Controlling temperatures in the building was an issue in the 1970s, especially in the glass-walled offices of the Supreme Court. A burst pipe flooded the chief justice's office in early 1977.
Interior
Rhodes Tower contains 41 stories and of office space. The building was constructed to accommodate 5,000 workers. As of 2022, approximately 2,600 state employees work in the building.
Its first floor was designed with a five-story galleria-like lobby, a unique feature made possible by the building's elevator placement. The center of the lobby has a winding staircase leading up to the former Supreme Court level as well as two escalators that lead to the basement's restaurant and passage to the Statehouse garage. Towards the back of the lobby is a stainless steel recreation of the Great Seal of Ohio. The floorplans of the building are column-free, 144 feet square. All of the building's elevators (20 for passengers and two for freight) and service shafts were designed outside of the square office space, at the north and east (back and side of the building). The elevators include express elevators that skip floors between the lobby and 18th floor. One of these elevators malfunctioned in 2021 with no injuries.
The four floors originally for the Ohio Supreme Court, directly above the lobby, were described in 1975 as an impressive "polished steel and glass enclave" with cushioned flaming scarlet carpeting. The main courtroom had leather high-back chairs behind a polished red granite bench. Behind the seats was a smaller version of the steel Ohio seal in the building's lobby. The courtroom connected to a corridor leading to justices' chambers, containing teakwood desks, velvet furniture, spacious work areas, and private individual showers. Each of these chambers was fronted by a wall of glass, and had a private mahogany-paneled elevator. The building's fourth floor contained the Supreme Court's 150,000-volume law library, with teak shelving, plush furniture, custom drapes and scarlet carpeting, as recorded in 1975.
The tower's interior has frequently been used for art exhibits. These include the Young People's Art Exhibit, sponsored by the Ohio Art Education Association in 2001. An Ohio Art League exhibition in 1992 prompted complaints from the building's tenants. Some of the pieces impeded hallways; other works in the exhibit received complaints due to nudity or their statements on sexism and reproductive rights. It was reported in 1973 that tower would feature its own commissioned artwork, at a cost of $300,000 to $400,000, including graphics, sculptures, and tapestries with themes of Ohio history, culture, geography, and resources. In 1974, a proposal aimed for $1,175,000 for paintings, gardens, sculptures, and other artworks, including a rooftop garden and sculpture; $800,000 was estimated to have been spent on the program in June 1974. Treasurer offices The building's ninth floor was designed for the offices of the Ohio State Treasurer, including a large and secure bank vault. The treasurer at the time the building opened, Gertrude Walton Donahey, objected to moving into the tower, preferring tradition and historical continuity with her office in the Ohio Statehouse, and alleging that the older bank vaults in the Statehouse would be more secure. The office and vault contents were nonetheless moved to the Rhodes Tower, though in 2007 the treasurer's office was moved back into the Statehouse.
Observation deck
The tower's 40th floor contains an observation deck, providing an unobscured panoramic view of Columbus, accessed by a 28-second elevator ride. The attraction is free to the public, requiring only photo IDs in order for lobby staff to grant visitor badges. The floor-to-ceiling viewing windows are located on the north, east, and south sides of the building, and on clear days they give views past the Columbus metropolitan area. Signs by the windows identify notable buildings and sights. When the building opened, the deck wrapped around all four sides of the building, though it was altered to allow for more office space on the floor. It is nevertheless one of few observation decks remaining open to the public; areas in the Leveque Tower and One Nationwide Plaza are no longer accessible.
The observation deck supports panoramic views of the surrounding city as well as numerous natural landmarks: the Scioto River, the beginning of the Appalachian Plateau, till plains to the north and south, and the Powell Moraine to the north.
The east-facing hallway on the floor features a mural by local artist Mandi Caskey. The artwork depicts Ohio in four seasons, accompanied by some of its natural symbols, including the white trillium flower, buckeye tree, and white-tailed deer. The work was unveiled in January 2017, and was the first new piece of public art in the building since it opened. Other works in the building will next be replaced, at one or two per year, as some of the 75 works on display are outdated, worn, or damaged.
The view has been described in Secret Columbus as the best panoramic view of the city, and a well-kept secret, given the observation deck's unlikely location in a state office building.
Falcon nest On the 41st floor, a nesting box with a video feed had been installed for peregrine falcons. The project began in 1989 in hopes of reintroducing the falcons to the area. Similar projects ran in Akron, Dayton, and Cincinnati to support the bird populations, which had severely dropped in the mid-20th century due to pesticide use. The box was moved to the 31st floor of the Vern Riffe State Office Tower (which had its own peregrines) in 2017 to prevent incidents during the renovation of the building's exterior, though the falcons nested in a commercial building on State Street instead.