Forget America the Beautiful for a moment, folks. While the US has more than its fair share of gorgeous buildings, the nation is sadly littered with architectural abominations that blight towns and cities from coast-to-coast. We’ve taken on board round-ups by Business Insider, ALOT Travel, Buildworld and more to come up with our own ranking of the most hideous buildings in the USA.
Read on to see where the ugliest building in your state ranks on our ignominious list of architectural horrors…
The dystopian Oakley HQ in foothill Ranch has been likened by Redditors to a villain's lair and “Madonna’s bustier circa 98 crossed with a knock off Star Wars set.” It's little wonder then that the building was singled out in 2012 as one of America's 25 ugliest by California Home + Design magazine, which canvassed 15 architects for their opinion. The brainchild of erstwhile Oakley design director Colin Baden and Langdon Wilson Architecture, the building was completed in 1998. According to the magazine, the HQ was “built as 'a monument to the machine age, a building designed to honor invention' [but] hasn't been cool since, well, ever.”
The University of Kansas in Lawrence boasts a vibrant campus, but its aesthetics take a nosedive at Wescoe Hall. Originally envisioned as a gleaming 25-story skyscraper, budget cuts and shifting priorities left students and staff with a stunted cast-concrete monstrosity that ALOT Travel describes as “a cement trailer on stilts.” Rumor has it the building was supposed to be a parking garage, which seems plausible given its design. Completed in 1973, Wescoe Hall has been a laughing stock for years and in 2002, the university newspaper jokingly announced that it had been named on the “National Registry of Eyesores and Monstrosities” along with the “Los Angeles County Landfill.”
The US Census Bureau HQ in Suitland is Maryland's ugliest building according to Business Insider readers. Completed in 2007, it's a monument to bureaucratic blandness. The Census This blog describes the vast complex, which reportedly cost $331 million, as a depressing mud-hut ugly black hole. Astonishingly, the structure has won numerous top design awards, which is indicative of the disconnect between the elite architecture community and the general public.
Billings Public Library is a thoroughly uninspiring building that could be mistaken for a nondescript warehouse or big-box store. According to the Cat Country 102.9 radio station, the library, which was completed in 2015 at a cost of $18 million, “looks like a chip of gray composite board you use on a deck. Nothing about this building stands out and makes you catch your breath... It was supposed to be this iconic fixture in our city. Instead, it looks like it should be thrown in the chipper.” Ouch.
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Completed in 1974, the Humanities Building at the University of New Mexico was designed by W C Kruger and Associates, the firm behind the lab in Los Alamos where J Robert Oppenheimer and co developed the first atomic bomb. Redditors have described the Cold War era building as the Southwestern “adobe style interpreted through brutalism” and “peak brutal”. With its paucity of windows and beige plastered concrete blocks, the structure is inhumane and hostile, which is ironic given it houses the university's humanities department.
New York City isn't lacking in ugly buildings, from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden to the skinny 432 Park Avenue. But the ugliest of them all, at least in our opinion, is the fortress-like Verizon Building. It opened in 1975. Like other Cold War-era comms buildings, it was designed to shield essential equipment in the event of a Soviet attack or other disaster. At the time, The New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger decried it as the "most disturbing" of the phone company's new switching centers since it "overwhelms the Brooklyn Bridge towers, thrusts a residential neighborhood into shadow and sets a tone of utter banality." Windows have since been added to the upper floors but the building remains a blight on the Manhattan skyline.
Charleston is a breathtakingly beautiful city, with exquisite architecture dating back hundreds of years, which makes the Holiday Inn Charleston-Riverview all the more egregious. The Holy City's skyline is marred by this unholy structure, though fortunately it's located on the other side of the Ashley River and away from Charleston's historic downtown. ALOT Travel has likened the round building to a prison tower. The hotel is actually one of a number of Holiday Inn 'corncobs' that were built during the 1960s and 1970s, and like the rest, it's aged very poorly.
If Art Deco and Brutalism had a baby, it would look something like this. In stark contrast to the majestic Neoclassical capitols that grace many state capitals, North Dakota's effort is a flop. Nicknamed 'the Skyscraper on the Prairie,' the building was designed by local architects Joseph Bell DeRemer and W F Kurke in conjunction with the renowned Chicago firm Holabird and Root. It was completed at the height of the Great Depression in 1934. And therein lies the reason the building looks so drab. With money tight, much of the exterior ornamentation was ditched, hence its cold Brutalist look. The writers of the ALOT Travel round-up call it the most depressing example of Art Deco architecture they've ever seen, and we're liable to agree.
Back to unlovely Postmodern designs, the Portland Municipal Services Building epitomizes the worst of the style, though it was viewed as groundbreaking upon its completion in 1982 and is considered the first tall PoMo office building in the world. With its mishmash of surface materials, motifs, and those tiny windows, the Lego-esque building has been polarizing from the get-go. In 2009, Travel + Leisure magazine called it “one of the most hated buildings in America,” while Business Insider readers picked it as the state's ugliest building in 2018. "Every Portlander's favorite example of a building to hate: The Portland Building," said one reader.
The ugliest skyscraper in West Virginia according to Business Insider, the 18-story Chase Tower in downtown Charleston has got to be one of the most unimaginative structures in the country. Built in 1969, the building is a total yawn fest design-wise and West Virginians are apt to agree. A local commenting on a City-Data forum finds “nothing impressive” about the Modernist tower, which was completed in 1969. With zero architectural flair, it really does look like any number of generic office buildings from the era.
Nashville's 617-foot (188m) AT&T Building is the tallest edifice in Tennessee and the ugliest according to Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel. Completed in 1994, the Postmodern tower is nicknamed the Batman Building on account of its uncanny resemblance to the Caped Crusader's mask. It's also been likened to the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. Yet the building has won plaudits for its distinctive design – in 2009 French business site Le Journal du Net named it one of the world's most original office buildings – and the tower has been called Nashville's most iconic structure. So iconic in fact that it features on the State of Tennessee driver's license.
Connecticut's ugliest building title is a battle between two New Haven heavyweights: the Pirelli Building and Knights of Columbus HQ. The latter, a stark brown tower, looks like a medieval stronghold that has been given the Brutalist treatment. The Pirelli Building, which was designed by Modernist architect Marcel Breuer and completed in 1970, has the edge in terms of grimness, though. Nicknamed “the weird one by IKEA” in Subreddit r/newhaven, the structure shocks onlookers with its strange form and 'missing' floors. Recently reinvented as the eco Hotel Marcel, it's described as a “Bauhaus beauty” in the marketing blurb, but plenty of people beg to differ.
More American nightmare than American dream according to ALOT Travel, the second-largest mall in the US was more than 17 years in the making. It opened in 2019 at a cost of $5 billion. Early on in its construction, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie called it “by far the ugliest building in New Jersey, and maybe America,” and the megamall is a regular fixture in ugly building round-ups. A gleaming white mess of odd-shaped structures, the complex has been slammed by locals for its confusing layout as well as its design, and many see it as an exorbitant waste of money that never should have left the drawing board.
Arizona's original State Capitol, which now serves as a museum, is a Neoclassical building topped with a copper dome that dates from 1901. It's anything but ugly. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the overbearing Senate, House and Executive Tower that menacingly surround it. Built between 1956 and 1960, the two modernist Senate and House blocks in front resemble fallout bunkers. They're no oil paintings but the Brutalist Executive Tower behind, which was completed in 1974, is just horrible – Thrillist sums it up perfectly, pointing out that the Soviet-style building “looks like it was lifted from Bratislava circa 1983.”
The Hoosier State is home to what the New York Post and Fast Company have dubbed 'the ugliest house in America', the infamous Kessler Mansion in Indianapolis. Curbed, which was first to reveal the final boss of McMansions (a multi-story, mass produced house), offered a scathing assessment: “If the world's worst designers got together to make a showhouse, it might look something like this.” The 11-bedroom, eight-bathroom abomination, which hurts the eyes with its haphazard design, endless balconies, and plethora of tacky statues, was hobbled together from five houses by colorful businessman Jerry A Hostetler. Following his death in 2006, the manse was bought by a local entrepreneur, who then spent years trying to offload it, finally selling the property in 2022 at the knockdown price of $660,000.
The tallest building in South Dakota is also the ugliest according to Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel. CenturyLink Tower, which was formerly known as Qwest Tower, isn't all that tall, though. With a height of only 174 feet (53m), the 11-story tower is the second-shortest of the nation's tallest buildings. Beset with structural issues, the 1971 building's original white stone facade had to be replaced later down the line with the current dreary brown cladding. And then a chunk of the structure was demolished to make way for the parking lot, which messed up the symmetry.
Completed in 1995, Denver International Airport (DIA) is Colorado's ugliest building according to Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel, while Buildworld has ranked it America's fifth most unattractive structure. This concrete leviathan isn't just an eyesore – it's a breeding ground for bizarre conspiracy theories. Creepy murals depicting war and environmental destruction have fueled speculation of hidden messages and even Illuminati or satanic involvement. The structure itself is a maze of beige and travelers often get lost as they attempt to navigate it. Add in persistent rumors about underground tunnels, Nazi runways, the 'Blucifer' sculpture and hidden chambers, and DIA seems less a welcoming gateway and more a monument to the weird and unsettling.
The nation's capital is awash with splendid buildings. But there are plenty of architectural horrors too in DC. Mark Twain reportedly described the grand French Second Empire-style Eisenhower Executive Office Building (then the Swan Building) as the ugliest in America. Just imagine what he'd think about the Brutalist J Edgar Hoover Building. Hailed as the most unattractive building in the US and the world's second ugliest by Buildworld, the soul-destroying FBI HQ looks like “an abandoned set from The Hunger Games,” according to Utah Senator Mike Lee.
Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel have opted for Burlington's Decker Towers as the ugliest building in Vermont – the 11-story apartment block is actually the shortest tallest building by state with a height of just 124 feet (38m). But we feel the McCardell Bicentennial Hall at Middlebury College beats it in the ugly stakes. Local blogger Donald Maurice Kreis is especially scathing. He ranks the hall as one of New England's three most unattractive edifices. “Resembling a vertically organized maximum security prison, Bicentennial Hall is outrageously out of proportion with the rest of what was once a collegiate skyline, visible atop a ridge for miles around, that was pleasantly bucolic.”
Honolulu isn't lacking in horrid skyscrapers that take away from the city's beautiful location. But one soaring building appears to have been hit extra hard with the ugly stick: the Hilton Grand Waikikian Hotel, which is Business Insider's pick for the state, based on its readers' responses. According to Honolulu Civil Beat columnist Curt Sanburn, the “dung-brown, gimcrack-covered” tower “looms drearily” over the city. And Redditor giantspec describes the intrusion on paradise as looking “like someone built a Fairfield Inn on top of another hotel.”
Back to boring Brutalist blocks, Manchester's Norris Cotton Federal Building is as ugly as they come. Built in the 1970s, it's been described by the New Hampshire Union Leader as a monstrosity. The box-shaped building is “the color of April mud." And with its windowless facade and other dispiriting design features, the structure looks cold “even on a July day." The publication also quoted an architect who said it looks like “a fearless fortress.”
This 1970s glass, brick, and concrete stinker isn't the worst-looking building in this round-up. But as ALOT Travel notes, the John Paul Hammerschmidt Federal Building in downtown Fayetteville sits amid some rather charming historic structures, making it “stick out like a sore thumb.” Presumably it's mainly for this reason that locals and outsiders dislike the building. Incidentally, John Paul Hammerschmidt was the first Republican elected to Congress from Arkansas since Reconstruction and is remembered for narrowly beating future POTUS Bill Clinton in the 1974 House of Representatives election.
The Ziggurat-style Apex building in Pawtucket was named by Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel as Rhode Island's ugliest building. But it does have a certain charm. The Sciences Library at Brown University on the other hand has no such allure. According to Magellan College Counseling, the 14-story Brutalist tower, which was completed 1971, has been twice-voted the ugliest building in the state. Critics say it looks like a giant bookcase that overwhelms its surroundings. Totally out of keeping with Providence's historic College Hill, it's seen by many as a stain on the heritage neighborhood.
Likewise, the former School of Law at the University of Maine in Portland appears in the AD round-up, while Business Insider readers declared it the state's ugliest building, as has ALOT Travel. Completed in 1972 by a local architectural firm, it's one of only a few examples of Brutalist architecture in Maine. The round structure looks like “a futuristic version of the Roman Colosseum” opines AD, while ALOT Travel calls it a monstrous Brutalist version of the Tower of London (or the castle's White Tower specifically). In any case, its days are numbered. The School of Law moved to a swish new building in downtown Portland in 2023 and the much-hated structure is awaiting demolition.
Boston's Brutalist City Hall is America's second ugliest edifice and the fourth ugliest globally according to Buildworld. It's the most unattractive in the state as per both Business Insider's readership and ALOT Travel, while in 2023 Boston.com readers voted it the ugliest building in the city. The downright offensive carbuncle was designed in 1962 by Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles, a firm of three Columbia University professors. Incredibly their design beat 255 other entries, so you can only imagine how awful the other contenders must've been.
Detroit's Motor City Casino and Hotel is Michigan's ugliest building according to Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel, but we think the Grand Castle Apartments building in Grandville is even worse. Redditors on the platform's r/UrbanHell forum have had a field day mocking the 2010s pastiche, which was apparently inspired by Germany's glorious Neuschwanstein Castle. A cheap knockoff of the beguiling original, it's reportedly been described by a local architect as “brutal Disney”. One commenter wrote that it's like “Neuschwanstein ate McDonald's Big Mac, super fries and big shakes three times a day for life,” while another stated that it “looks like a prison someone tried and failed to spruce up.”
AD featured the Crosley Tower at the University of Cincinnati in its round-up of America's ugliest college buildings and the brutalist 16-story building is the Business Insider readers' pick for Ohio's ugliest skyscraper. According to AD, the building “looks more like a Disney villain's lair than a part of the University of Cincinnati’s campus.” Designed by a local architectural firm and completed in 1969, the 'totem' of the college was crafted from a single pour of concrete and is the second largest single-pour cement structure after the Hoover Dam. Much to the delight of its detractors, the tower has been slated for demolition and is set to meet the wrecking ball next year.
This enormous metal cube has bagged a ton of awards believe it or not. Completed in 2014, the 10-story federal courthouse, which was later named in honor of the late Senator Orrin Hatch, is another one of those buildings which is loved by the architectural elite but loathed by many regular folks. The building has been widely derided by locals and goes by a number of mocking monikers, including the Borg Cube (after the boxy starship of the hostile Borg alien race in Star Trek) and the Justice Dumpster. Others have compared it to a colossal swamp cooler or AC condenser.
Back to Brutalist college buildings, this horror at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is dubbed the 'Inhumanities Building' because of its appalling inhumane design. Designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese in the late 1960s, the 300,000-square-foot (27,871sqm) structure has proved deeply unpopular with almost everyone who has studied or worked in it. A Redditor who was “a student, an instructor, and a chorister” in “that benighted building” sums up the general mood: “I'd pay quite a bit to swing the first wrecking ball. I don't care how it looks from the outside – its navigation is bewildering, its rooms claustrophobic and poorly-ventilated, and its general air inhumane and prisonish. Destroy it. The sooner the better.”
The Tycon Office Building in Vienna is often cited as the town's ugliest building. But it does have a certain allure. Unlike this weird round creation in Richmond, which looks like a parking garage that was roughed up by a tornado. Hilariously, the Markel Building was actually inspired by a baked potato wrapped in foil. The idea came to the architect Haigh Jamgochian at an American Institute of Architect’s dinner in 1962. Fast-forward to 2009 and the 'Potato Building' was named one of the 10 ugliest buildings in the world by Virtual Tourist.
As we've seen, government buildings in America are often too ugly for words and among the worst of the worst is the Cheney Federal Building in Casper. The building, which makes your heart sink with its insipidness, dates from the 1970s but was later renamed in honor of the ex vice president Richard Bruce Cheney, who has close ties to the city. He must have been thrilled, probably as delighted as he was in 2005 when two former Cornell University entomologists named a species of slime-mold beetle after him.
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The King County Administration Building has divided locals since it opened in 1971. Not long after its completion, the bizarre honeycomb structure was voted the ugliest government building in the country and the label stuck. "I think everybody acknowledges it may be the ugliest building in downtown Seattle,” opined the former deputy mayor of the city Tim Ceis. After remaining mostly vacant for years, the building was shuttered in 2022 and has been slated for demolition as part of a civic campus redevelopment program.
The Rollins Building in suburban Wilmington was commissioned by rags-to-riches tycoon John W Rollins to house his eponymous firm. It opened in 1972, complete with a rooftop heliport. Rollins actually ended up dying in his office suite there in 2000. The tallest building in Delaware upon its completion, the 15-story tower was originally clad in pristine white marble but was painted brown in 2004 after AstraZeneca snapped it up (the property is now owned by Wells Fargo). The paint job has added to the ugliness of the building. ALOT Travel notes the structure now looks like a giant adobe brick prison.
Disney was aiming for a futuristic feel with its Contemporary Resort in Lake Buena Vista but the massive A-frame structure, which opened in 1971, is more Brutalist cruise ship run aground than The Jetsons come to life. ALOT Travel calls it “a futuristic Aztec pyramid, which is not something you would normally associate with Mickey Mouse.” While the monorail that runs through the building is a unique touch, the imposing edifice looks totally out of place amid the whimsical world of Disney, with its bleak design contrasting harshly with the fairytale structures and cheerful cartoon characters the theme park is famed for.
Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel plumped for Chicago's glass-covered Thompson Center as the least easy-on-the-eye building in Illinois. But the House of Blues, which opened in 1996, trumps it in unattractiveness. Time Out ranks the entertainment venue the ugliest building in the Windy City. According to the magazine, it “looks like a tiki hut that had a giant concrete pancake dropped on top of it. The venue’s acoustics lend further credence to this theory.” And Mike McCain, who offers an Ugly Buildings of Chicago walking tour, has likened the structure to an armadillo.
Formerly Kaden Tower, Wright Tower was renamed in 2023 to reflect its history: the 1966 building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's protege William Wesley Peters. Nicknamed the “giant white doily”, the lacework-fronted tower has garnered international acclaim but locals are far from enamored with the building, which sits on an incongruous site on the outskirts of town. Redditors taking to the r/UrbanHell forum have expressed their visceral loathing of it, while Wright Tower is both the ALOT Travel and Business Insider readers' pick for the ugliest building in Kentucky.
This Shrek-esque architecture was deemed the fourth ugliest building in the world by Virtual Tourist back in 2011 and has been voted one the ugliest buildings in the Twin Cities by Star Tribune readers. Decorated with green bathroom tiles – yes, they are bathroom tiles – the bizarre Christmas tree-themed office block is "a 1980s version of the Emerald City that almost forces residents to look at it” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Springfield's tallest building, the 22-story Hammons Tower aka Hammy T was developed by local business mogul John Q Hammons in the late 1980s according to the Springfield Daily Citizen. A brooding presence that casts a long shadow over the city, the scary-looking black monolith has been described as the “Darth Vader Tower.” Redditors have compared it to the skyscraper HQ in the DC Comics' Teen Titans comic books and TV series, though the building gives off supervillain rather than superhero vibes.
Buildworld has ranked the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas the sixth ugliest building in the US and the ninth least attractive globally. The edifice also appears on Architectural Digest's 2018 round-up of the world's ugliest skyscrapers. “Not everything beautiful needs to flash like gold,” AD wrote. “The Trump Tower in Las Vegas is a perfect example of that. Completed in 2008, the 620-foot-tall (189m) structure is an eyesore even in a city filled with over-the-top architecture.”
This monstrous Postmodern mess, which encompasses 581,000 square feet (54,000sqm), looms over Mobile's historic downtown. A granite, steel, and glass hotchpotch designed to evoke a nautical vibe, Government Plaza was completed in 1994 at a cost of $73 million, a hefty $15 million over budget. According to Mobile Bay Magazine, one prominent local dubbed the complex “Gump Tower” and Redditor Brucine recently commented that the architecture was hated by almost everyone. Not only unattractive, the civic carbuncle has been plagued by engineering issues since the get-go. The cavernous 'weather-proof' atrium was billed as being 'a real bonus with Mobile's rain,' yet the structure has been leaking on and off since 1995.
The Westmark Hotel in Anchorage is the most unsightly building in Alaska as per both the Business Insider readers' survey from 2018 and a more recent ALOT Travel round-up. The city's 13th tallest building is depressingly drab and nondescript rather than out-and-out odious, though Tripadvisor reviewers have called it “a dump”, “very old and rundown”, and “dirty, disgusting, seedy, unsafe.” On another note, Thrillist picked Alaska's state capitol in Juneau as one of the “flat-out ugliest” in the country back in 2017. Like the Westmark Hotel, the “unassuming” building is bland and boring, looking more like a regular office block instead of the most important government building in the state.
Fulton County Library in Atlanta is the last 'masterpiece' designed by the aforementioned Marcel Breuer of the Bauhaus school, who was one of the starchitects of Brutalist architecture. Dedicated in 1980, it's the sort of building elite architects drool over and almost everyone else despises. A cold, dark and unwelcoming concrete block that was designed to keep out light (to preserve the books perhaps), the structure was once described by a Fulton County official as looking more like a prison than a place of learning. The building was slated for demolition in 2016 but saved from the wrecking ball in 2020, much to the chagrin of its many haters.
Completed in 2016, the Zions Bank Building in Boise “looks like a classic skyscraper is slowly being devoured by a more modern one” as per ALOT Travel. The odd contrasting design is a major fail and the fact it's the tallest building in the state means the structure can be seen from far and wide. That said, the nearby Wells Fargo building gives the skyscraper a good run for its money in the ugly stakes.
Louisiana boasts some fabulous architecture, particularly in beautiful New Orleans. But the Pelican State has plenty of stinkers too. The Health Sciences Center at Louisiana State University in Shreveport was named by Business Insider readers as the ugliest building in the state, while Architectural Digest has selected it as one of its seven ugliest university buildings. According to the magazine, “the microscopic windows dotting this boxlike structure give this educational hospital a prison-like appearance.”
Philadelphia's United States Mint building is a prime example of Brutalist architecture at its most imposing and disheartening. Taking up an entire block, the structure is windowless on several sides, no doubt for security reasons, giving it a markedly bleak feel. A challenger for Pennsylvania's ugliest building is the Brutalist Wesley W. Posvar Hall at the University of Pittsburgh, which is similarly overpowering and aggressive, and features in the ALOT Travel round-up.
The AT&T Central Office in Houston was dubbed one of America's 25 ugliest buildings by California Home + Design magazine back in 2012. Like other old telephone exchange buildings, it was designed to be as robust as possible in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack so as to protect the essential comms equipment contained within. But with its harsh windowless walls, the structure is far from pretty. Another contender for the Lone Star State's ugliest building is San Antonio's Alamodome, which features in the Business Insider and Buildworld round-ups.
Tulsa wows with a wealth of fine Art Deco architecture but the Oklahoma city has an abundance of ugly structures as well, with the abandoned Abundant Life Building the worst offender. As Atlas Obscura has noted, the building could not be less like its name. It was built in 1958 to house the global HQ of televangelist organization the Oral Roberts Ministries. Windows were intentionally left out of the design to make the most of modern innovations such as central air and strip lighting. Vacant since the 1980s, it's reportedly been described by local officials as “an eyesore” and “a disaster,” yet the asbestos-riddled structure still stands, unsettling anyone who has the misfortune to pass by it.
The Biltmore Companies look after the spectacular French Renaissance Revival Biltmore Estate, which was built for George Washington Vanderbilt II at the end of the 19th century. Lamentably, its HQ in Asheville, which it shares with Merrill Lynch, is the antithesis of the world-renowned chateau. Dating from 1980, the seven-story modernist structure was designed by I M Pei & Partners, the firm responsible for the Louvre Pyramid and East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Definitely one of its half-hearted efforts, the glass and concrete edifice is as unremarkable as a building can be.
Mississippi's ugliest building is the Gold Strike Casino Resort in Robinsonville, according to Business Insider readers and ALOT Travel. Dating from the 1990s, the tasteless building, which was the tallest in the state upon its completion, is obnoxiously overbearing and in your face. And those gold credit card chip windows are more gaudy than classy.
Looking like it was transplanted from the Soviet Union, Omaha's spartan Police Department HQ, which was built in 1970, is Nebraska's ugliest building, as per the ALOT Travel round-up. Harsh, intimidating and devoid of any redeeming features, it's also an engineering dud. Large amounts of asbestos have been removed from the building and according to Omaha Police Deputy Chief Steve Serveny, the HQ “has issues with plumbing, electrical, and mechanical issues that have become quite costly.” Plans are now afoot to replace it with a new combined Police and Fire Department HQ, as reported by KMTV 3 News Now.
Last December, the Des Moines Register asked readers to nominate the worst building in the city. Unsurprisingly, the public clapped back with Two Ruan Center. We can only agree. The 14-story office block, which is being converted into apartments, is clad in weathered Cor-Ten steel, lending it a tired, rundown feel. It was built in 1981 for the equivalent of $45 million in 2024 money but is now worth only $6.7 million. One reader had this to say about the edifice: “Blocky, rusty looking, nothing creative about the architecture. Just one plain ugly building that does a disservice to our downtown.”
Now read on to discover the tallest buildings in America, ranked