Ponte City Apartments is 173 m (567.6 ft) high, which makes it the tallest residential skyscraper in South Africa.
The original architectural plan provided a cylindrical shape of the building with a hollow interior named “core.” The skyscraper was built in 1975 in once cosmopolitan Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg.
Hillbrow had been considered a fancy place until the criminal activity gradually turned the area into a gangland. By the end of the 90s many gangs moved into the Ponte City, devastating it and leaving 5 stories high pile of debris in the “core.”
Presently the building belongs to a private company and several projects of the renovation are slow to implement because of the lack of money. That is why Ponte City remains a giant symbol of the urban decay.
