Tennessee Tower

This 31-story building was completed in 1970 to house the growing headquarters of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. At 452 feet tall, it stood as the city’s tallest structure until 1986 when the Third National Financial Center, now Fifth Third Center, was completed. Designed in the International Style by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, this architecture firm is known worldwide for its high-rise designs, which include Chicago’s John Hancock Center, New York’s One World Trade Center, and Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the office building that currently holds the title of the world’s tallest.

The building is clad in Italian Travertine marble with inset floor-to-ceiling bronze glass windows. In 1975, an addition to the base structure and the construction of a rooftop plaza brought the building’s size to 830,000 square feet of office space. When a piece of its marble cladding was found shattered on the building’s roof plaza in 1985, they discovered that the building’s exterior stainless-steel anchors had been substituted with galvanized iron, which had corroded. A lengthy and expensive replacement of the anchor system with stainless steel bolts took two years to complete.

With American General’s purchase of National Life in 1982, a long process to merge the companies began, and the insurance company’s Nashville workforce was reduced. The need for office space declined, and the company sold the tower to the State of Tennessee in 1994. The building was renamed for William R. Snodgrass, the State’s Comptroller of the Treasury from 1955 to 1999. Today it is home to more than 1,000 state employees.

Building by day, the Snodgrass Tower turned into a glowing billboard by night. Office lights and strategically closed window blinds formed public service messages ranging from “GO VOTE” to holiday greetings like “PEACE ON EARTH.“ In 1997, as part of a building renovation, a special film was placed over the windows to increase energy efficiency. Unfortunately, it also blocked interior lights, which made its messages almost invisible—thus ending a beloved Nashville tradition. 

Continue down Seventh Ave North and cross Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Blvd. at the end of the block. The Tennessee Supreme Court is on your LEFT.