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Crestar Bank Headquarters (United Virginia Bank)
Bold and angular (but not unpleasant), this modern tower of granite is set back on a plaza of granite, not unlike the siting of the NationsBank Center to the east. The building's design employs hard-edged, sharply geometric angles right down to such details as the steps that lead to and from the front plaza and follow the sloping terrain. While hardly welcoming, the building does a better job of addressing its Cary Street front than do other buildings that face this major financial district thoroughfare. Although somewhat stark and Brutalist compared with neighboring buildings on Main, the Crestar complex possesses a sense of permanence that is lacking in many of Richmond's late twentieth-century office buildings. The sculpture on the plaza is Quadrature (1985), by Robert Engman.
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