BAYTOWN, Texas – The tallest building in Baytown will stand no more.
On Saturday, the old 10-story ExxonMobil Main Office Building on Decker Drive will be imploded.
Built in 1971, the office building was home to the administrative offices for ExxonMobil’s operations in the Baytown area for 50 years.
The building was closed in 2024.
At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, the building will be imploded.
“A lot of us have memories and most of us drive by it just about every day and it’s gonna be sad to see it go‚” said Sallie Daniel Sherman, whose father worked in the building when it first opened.
The building has become a fixture in the community, much like a landmark or even a sporting stadium - even earning a nickname.
Sallie Daniel Sherman: “This is what we Baytownians affectionately call the White House.”
KPRC 2’s Gage Goulding: “Why do they call it the White House?”
Sallie Daniel Sherman: “I guess they just called it that because it’s white. It was easier to say than the Exxon Refinery main office building.”
Her earliest of memories include being with her father at his office inside the building just off the TX 330 Spur.
“It was fun to visit because he built all the models before Exxon would build anything,“ she said. ”And then when he retired in ’86, I’m pretty, sure computers replaced everything he did.”
No memory was greater for Sallie than working here with her dad while home for the summer during her college years at Texas A&M.
“Lots of Baytonians have lots of memories here,” Sherman said.
That includes the current generation of ExxonMobil employees.
“I remember coming down here and my first stop coming to Texas to Baytown was in this building,” said Kim Haas, the site manager at ExxonMobil’s Baytown Olefin Site.
A half century later, she, too, knows the legacy these walls hold.
That’s what makes it so hard to blow up - literally.
Dynamite will bring down the building and the thousands of memories with it, making way for something new.
“It also brings a lot of excitement to the next chapter of what ExxonMobil has in store for our operations here in Baytown. And we have a lot growth plans actively progressing forward,” Haas said.
There’s no formal plan for what’s next at the site, but it could be what the White House was for Baytown in the 1970s - the next big thing.
“It’ll be strange to drive by and it’s not there anymore,” Sallie Daniel Sherman said as she snapped a final photograph.
