Westin Peachtree Plaza

A mirrored-glass cylinder hotel with a revolving restaurant on top, once the world's tallest hotel.

The architect was John C. Portman Jr. The tower is clad in reflective glass in a cylinder shape that mirrors much of the downtown skyline. Though it looks curved, each of its roughly 5,600 windows is flat. It was Atlanta's tallest building until 1987 and still has more floors than any other building in Atlanta and in Georgia.

What stood here before

The first building on the site was Georgia's first official Governor's Mansion in Atlanta, a Victorian house the state bought in 1870. It housed 17 governors until 1921 and was torn down in 1923 for the Henry Grady Hotel, named for the newspaper man Henry W. Grady. That hotel and the Roxy Theatre were later demolished to make room for the present tower.

Records and rivals

The hotel opened as the Peachtree Plaza Hotel under Western International Hotels, which became Westin Hotels in 1981. It was the tallest hotel in the world for just a year, until 1977, when its architectural twin, the Detroit Plaza Hotel, the central tower of the Renaissance Center in Detroit, also designed by Portman, passed it. It was also the tallest building in the southeastern United States until the Southeast Financial Center in Miami topped it in 1983.

Lagoon, elevators and a revolving restaurant

A smaller cylinder runs the full height on one side and holds two scenic elevators. At the top is the Sun Dial Restaurant and Bar, a revolving restaurant: its top floor makes a full turn every 30 minutes, the bottom every 60. When the hotel opened, its seven-story lobby atrium rose from a half-acre indoor lake called the lagoon, with floating cocktail islands, over 100 trees and cages of live birds. In June 2026 Portman Holdings bought the hotel and announced a big renovation.

On the globe

The model shows the mirrored-glass cylinder with the round restaurant on top. Look at how its smooth shape stands out.