It stands as an icon of the world’s once-largest chain of retail stores that today’s young adults cannot remember. Despite a grand opening in 1913 that was a civic, even a national, event, the Woolworth Building turns away its architectural admirers. And those who today seek out the tower are stopped by a sign at the Broadway entrance suggesting that they find some other monument in this great city of monuments to admire. Situated at the southwestern edge of City Hall Park, the building’s intensely vertical Gothic tower is not particularly visible on today’s skyline, save from certain vantage points on Broadway and the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps because of its downtown location, its neo-Gothic aesthetic (neither an early solution to the skyscraper design problem, nor a “modern” one), or its now-unremarkable height, this skyscraper has not held public attention quite so well. Rockefeller Center, the bridges that link the island of Manhattan to New Jersey and its neighboring boroughs, and the city’s train and subway stations have been documented by historians, engineers, and designers.Ĭuriously absent on these shelves are the volumes, even the single volume, dedicated to the Woolworth Building. Other skyscrapers and ensembles have also had their share of press. It is the monument we see as we travel east through the last miles of New Jersey before the Lincoln Tunnel, and it is the monument at which thousands snake through lines and security checks to rise to its aluminum-clad top for a tourist’s eye view of the city. For scholar and tourist, the Empire State Building, located in midtown Manhattan, commands center stage. Urban and architectural historians looking for New York City or skyscraper history can find a shelf of books proclaiming the significance of the Empire State Building (1931). Reviewed by Roberta Moudry (Cornell University) The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York.Ĭhicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
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