page_title: 1600 Smith Street
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: 1600 Smith Street / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Continental Center I, the Continental Airlines headquarters, and KBR Tower, the KBR headquarters, in Downtown Houston, Texas Español: El Continental Center I, la sede del Continental Airlines, y el KBR Tower, la sede del KBR, en Downtown Houston, Texas
context_page_description: 1600 Smith Street, is a 51-story, 732-foot office tower in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. It served as the headquarters of Continental Airlines prior to its merger with United Airlines, and at one point also served as the headquarters of ExpressJet Airlines. It is a part of the Cullen Center complex.
  The 51 story building has about 1,098,399 square feet of rentable Class "A" office space. The design architect was Morris Architects, the general contractor was Linbeck Construction Company, the mechanical engineer was I.A. Naman, and the structural engineer was CBM Engineers. The building was completed in 1984.
  The tower stands as a postmodern-style building. It is currently the 9th-tallest building in Houston.
context_section_description: Continental Center I includes a blue lighting pattern on the roof that displays the Continental Airlines logo. The light had been kept off for a period before 2010. After Continental had occupied the building, the airline wanted to display its logo on the roof of Continental Center I. The City of Houston had a 1993 ordinance restricting the height of any new signs in Downtown Houston to 42.5 feet (13.0 m). On Wednesday August 2, 2000, the Houston City Council voted 10–4 to stop enforcing the informal agreement and enact a new law that exempts a company from the height restriction if the national headquarters of a company occupies 45 percent or more of a Downtown Houston building of over 750,000 square feet (70,000 m²) of usable space. The Mayor of Houston, Lee P. Brown, said that he supported the ordinance change since it was a promise made by Bob Lanier to the airline in exchange for enticing the company to move its headquarters to Continental Center I. Opponents of the change feared that company logos would become more prevalent in the Downtown Houston skyline.
  The elevators were manufactured by Fujitec.
caption: Continental Center I at night (left), with the KBR Tower. Continental Center I had a blue lighting pattern that was added after the Houston City Council approved an amended ordinance permitting Continental Airlines to place its logo on the building.
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