The Calgary Tower rose through one stretch of continuous concrete pouring, from May 15 to June 8, 1967. We’d put that date range on a plaque, because it shows how fast a prairie city could move in the 1960s.
The tower’s own site says the crew used “a relatively new slip-forming construction technique,” and that the record for one day was a 39-foot pour. Construction started on February 19, 1967, according to Calgary Tower’s own history page, and finished in June 1968. The bill came to $3.5 million.
Our favourite number is that 39 feet. A single day of pouring that added 39 feet of tower is the kind of figure that makes a builder grin.
What it was called before Calgary Tower
Husky Tower. The site says the original owners were Husky Oil Limited and Marathon Realty, as part of the Palliser Square redevelopment, and the name changed officially on November 1, 1971. If an older Calgarian still says Husky Tower, now you know why. They’re right about the first few years.
How tall it is and how much it moves
The tower’s architecture page gives its height as 190.8 metres, or 626 feet, built of concrete and steel. It lists Poole Construction Co. as general contractor and Ricketts, Evers and Associates for structural work.
The numbers we like best are about movement. The site says the tower can sway up to 16.5 centimetres in wind and handle gusts up to 161 km/h. It also says this was the first structure in Canada’s western provinces engineered to resist earthquakes. For a city whose main weather drama is the chinook, that’s a lot of preparation for a different kind of shaking.
Up top, the original plan had a revolving restaurant for 200 guests and an observation deck for 250 people.
How the tower changed after 1968
It kept getting new jobs. In 1985 a $2.4 million renovation added a grill and a souvenir shop to the observation area. In 1987 a natural gas Olympic cauldron went on top, ahead of the 1988 Winter Games, and in 1988 a tower replica joined the Olympic torch relay.
In 2005 a glass floor went into the observation deck for Alberta’s centennial. LED lights followed in 2014 for nightly displays, and a theatre room with twenty-one curved screens opened in 2018, the year the tower marked its 50th anniversary.
The 1988 entry is the one we’d read twice. The site says the tower hosted tens of thousands of people during the Calgary Olympics, and a replica travelled in the torch relay, so the landmark was both a venue and a symbol that year.
Why a 1960s tower still matters to Calgary culture
It kept earning its place. Plenty of observation towers of its era stopped being useful once the novelty wore off. This one picked up every big civic moment from the Olympic flame to the centennial and wore it on the outside, where all of downtown could see it.
Our take is that the Calgary Tower is a continuous public noticeboard made of concrete, and that first uninterrupted pour in 1967 set the habit.
Next up for you is Calgary Buildings With More Careers Than Most Actors. After that, Calgary Was Almost Called Fort Brisebois. Or try The Women Who Kept Lougheed House Alive After 1938 for a change of pace.
Related reading from us: Go sit in the King Eddy, Calgary’s home of the blues.
Quick answers
The Calgary Tower is 190.8 metres, or 626 feet, tall. Construction started on February 19, 1967, and finished in June 1968, at a cost of $3.5 million. The concrete was poured continuously from May 15 to June 8, 1967, using a relatively new construction technique.
It was called the Husky Tower. The tower’s own history page says the original owners were Husky Oil Limited and Marathon Realty, as part of the Palliser Square redevelopment. The name changed officially to Calgary Tower on November 1, 1971.
The tower’s site says it can sway up to 16.5 centimetres in wind and handle gusts up to 161 km/h. It also says the Calgary Tower was the first structure in Canada’s western provinces engineered to resist earthquakes. Poole Construction Co. was general contractor.
