Today’s post, and the last four days, cover the “tallest buildings in the world” – assuming you mean skyscrapers when you say that – from 1899 to 1930. The Woolworth Building – seen above in the last stages of exterior work, with the copper hip roof in place and only the terra cotta cladding of the upper tower still in construction – took the title from the Met Life Tower in 1913 and held it for 17 years. You can see Singer and its unfortunate companion, City Investing, left of center; the Park Row building is on the far left.
Woolworth was the last of the very tall buildings with a heavy masonry curtain wall. When the competition for “tallest” began again in the 1920s, spurred on by another increase in land value and another resulting wave of speculation, the new tallest buildings had much lighter walls as well as other more modern details…to be discussed in the near future.
