[icegreentea]

It's a bit a lot of things. I can't find when the building was built, but I'm guessing the 60s/70s, so pretty much the height of brutalist architecture. Basically, very hard geometric forms, heavy on repetition, lots of concrete. There's a lot of that type of stuff sitting around, especially on university campuses.

It appears to be have been actually designed for use as a telephone switching center, for which windows actually are mostly useless. Should take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street, another telephone exchange in NYC. It is literally a window-less skyscraper.

[nostromo]

Most big cities have a communications building like this.

My favorite one is in NYC: 33 Thomas Street. It looks like it was designed to be the capitol of a dystopian megalopolis.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/33_Thoma...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/33_Thoma...

Speaking of dystopia... I bet it houses a spy room just like the one in SF!

[cavemanklaus]

Reminds me of the film Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(film) very imposing building!

[sneak]

Everything about this comment is perfect, down to your username.

[dm2]

33 Thomas Street is an awesome building, self-sufficient, radiation hardened, and 18 foot ceilings.