The Skyscraper Museum

About

Located in New York City, the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis, The Skyscraper Museum celebrates the City's rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines. Through exhibitions, programs, and publications, the Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence.

Founded, 1996

Past Events

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Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961

Queens: A History of the Most Diverse Place on Earth

New York’s Scoundrels, Scalawags, and Scrappers: The City in the Last Decade of the Gilded Age

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Ten Tallest Buildings in 1900 in NYC

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2

Park Row Building (15 Park Row)

R.H. Robertson’s Park Row Building was the tallest in the world until 1908. Financed by August Belmont, a pioneer of New York’s first subway, the building had 30 stories, nearly 1,000 offices, and cost $2,750,000 to build.

3

Cooper Union Foundation Building

The landmark Foundation Building of the Cooper Union, established by industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper, was the first to feature a structural system of rolled wrought iron. Together with a unique circular elevator shaft and ventilation system, the building's innovations were a harbinger of the technological advancements in skyscraper design. - Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Building, New York. Library of Congress.

4

Equitable Building

Often included, along with the Tribune and Western Union buildings, in the trio called "New York's first skyscrapers," the first headquarters of the Equitable Life Assurance Society was a seven-story building. The upper-floor offices were leased at high rents because the building was the first in the city to include elevators–two "vertical steam cars" that rose in 130-foot shafts. - Equitable Life Assurance Building, New York. George Browne Post, 1868-70

5

Brooklyn Bridge

The first and longest steel-wire suspension bridge in the world, the Brooklyn Bridge spanned 1,595 feet and reached 275 feet above the high water mark. With 16 inch diameter cables and caissons 78 feet below water, the bridge was an epochal feat of engineering that rose higher than any building in Manhattan. - Plan of One Tower for the East River Bridge, 1867. National Archives.

6

New York World Building

Tallest building in the world in 1890, the headquarters for Joseph Pulitzer's World stretched 309 feet to its gold dome. Architect George B. Post used a hybrid "cage" system common in New York which used steel framing to support the interior structure and exterior masonry walls with metal columns embedded to carry floor loads.

1907 - World Building Postcard

7

James Bogardus Factory

Described as "the first complete cast-iron edifice ever erected" by its designer and manufacturer James Bogardus, this 4-story factory on Duane Street was composed of cast-iron members. The walls, floors, and interior columns were prefabricated, making the building an important precursor to metal-framed skyscrapers.

8

St. Paul Building

While many skyscrapers were made taller by pointed roofs or cupolas, George B. Post’s St. Paul Building reached its lofty height with a flat roof. Its neoclassical style, with its many-layered rows of columns, was consistent with older neighboring buildings.

9

Manhattan Life Insurance Building

Notable for its ingenuity in engineering, this building was one of the first to use pneumatic caissons for its foundations. Designed by architects Kimball and Thompson and engineer Charles Sooysmith, it reached a height of 348 ft.

Manhattan Life Insurance Building Foundations

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Manhattan Life Insurance Building

Designed by Kimball & Thompson for the Manhattan Life Insurance Company, the Manhattan Life Building became NYC’s tallest skyscraper in 1893. It was also the first office building to use pneumatic caissons in its foundation.

Manhattan Life Insurance Building Foundations

11

American Surety Company Building

The ornate 23-story American Surety Building at 100 Broadway was the second tallest in New York on completion in 1896. Architect Bruce Price used steel framing and curtain-wall construction, as well as caisson foundation piers that were described in detail in Scientific American.

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The Waldorf Astoria

Built on the site of the millionaire mansions of the Astor family, two separate, but connected structures– the 13-story iron-framed Waldorf and the later steel-framed 16-story Astoria–were joined to become the Waldorf-Astoria, the world's largest hotel. Illustrating the cycle of Manhattan's rising land values, the great hotel was demolished in 1929 and replaced by the Empire State Building.

1908 - Postcard of Waldorf Astoria Hotel

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Flatiron Building

Rising 285 feet, the Flatiron Building was shorter than several contemporary skyscrapers, but it remains a New York favorite due to its dramatic triangular "flat-iron" shape that narrows to just 6 feet at Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd St. The official name, the Fuller Building, referred to Fuller Construction Co., the major skyscraper builders who erected, owned, and had headquarters in the speculative office building.

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American Surety Company Building

At the time of its completion in 1895, Bruce Price’s American Surety Building was the second-tallest skyscraper in NYC. It had a steel-skeleton frame and curtain walls that were significantly thinner than heavy load-bearing walls, freeing up additional space in offices.

15

Cable Building

The Commercial Cable Building, designed by Harding and Gooch, employed concrete-filled cast iron pipes for an innovative approach to foundation engineering used to stabilize the slender tower.

16

American Tract Society

The American Tract Society rented out offices in their building, using the profits to spread Christianity and donate to charity. The structure, built by R.H. Robertson, is most notable for its six horizontal divisions and rooftop loggia.

17

Gillender Building

Despite its tiny 25 ft. x 75 ft. lot, Berg & Clark’s Gillender Building was still one of NYC’s tallest edifices in 1900. The slender skyscraper’s lifespan was short; it was demolished in 1910 to make room for the even taller Bankers Trust Building.

18

Sugar House Prison Window

At 5-7 stories, sugar houses were constructed with thick masonry walls and stood taller than most contemporary buildings. At least 5 sugar refineries were erected in lower Manhattan in colonial times. Later, refineries of 10 stories or taller were built near the waterfront. - "Old Sugar House in Liberty Street," Mary Louise Booth, History of The City of New York, pg.316. 1867.

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Trinity Church and Graveyard

The third Trinity Church on its site still stands today at the head of Wall Street. The neo-gothic landmark was the highest point on New York's skyline until the completion of the World Building in 1890. - Trinity Church, Ezekiel Porter Belden, New York, Past, Present, and Future, pg. ix. Putnam, 1849.

1849 - Trinity Church

20

E. V. Haughwout Building

This six-story dry goods store on the corner of Broadway and Broome Street had an ornate façade of cast iron by architect and manufacturer James Bogardus, as well as the first passenger elevator in a commercial building. - Huaghwout Building, Samuel.north, March 2009.

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New York Tribune Building

Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, the headquarters of the New York Tribune newspaper was the tallest building in the city, rising 260 feet to the tip of its ornamental tower. In 1883, the first 10-story masonry structure became the base for an addition of nine stories, a common practice in the late 19th century. - Tribune Building view from Northwest, 1874. Library of Congress.

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Statue of Liberty National Monument

The statue's internal structure of wrought iron trusses is an early example of the skeleton frame engineered by A. Gustav Eiffel. The frame, which at 151 feet equals the height of a 15-story building, supports the exterior copper "curtain wall" of Liberty's garments. - Scaffolding for the assemblage of the Statue of Liberty. Albert Fernique, 1883. New York Public Library.

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New York World Building

1907 - World Building Postcard

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Manhattan Life Insurance Building

… the Manhattan Life Building became NYC’s tallest skyscraper in 1893. It was also the first office building to use pneumatic caissons in its foundation.

Manhattan Life Insurance Building Foundations

25

Park Row Building (15 Park Row)

At thirty stories and 391 feet to the top of its twin cupolas, New York's Park Row Building was the tallest office building in the world. A speculative real estate venture, it contained 950 offices and could accommodate up to 4,000 workers.

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One Times Square

The New York Times headquarters was completed in 1905 on a triangular site at the intersection of Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42 St., an area soon dubbed Times Square. The Times claimed that at 476 ft, the building was the "City's Tallest Structure from Base to Top," inflating its standard curb-to-top measurement of 363 ft by including its basements and flagpole.

1910 - Postcard of the New York Times Tower

27

Bankers Trust

In search of a stylistic language for verticality, New York City architects often relied on historical precedents. This Scientific American cover observes the exaggerated scale of the Bankers Trust Building as compared to the Venetian Campanile of San Marco.

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Bankers Trust

Even as competing steel mills rolled larger and larger beams, riveted sections remained the norm in skyscraper construction. The massive riveted steel frame of the Bankers Trust Building represented state-of-the-art construction in 1911.

29

Empire Building

Speculatively built by the O.B. Potter estate and designed by Kimball and Thompson, the Empire Building housed Andrew Carnegie’s United States Steel Corporation offices, among many others.

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Elevator safety brake demonstrated

At New York's Crystal Palace exhibition, businessman Elisha Graves Otis demonstrated his invention, the safety break, which reduced the danger of elevator free fall, revolutionizing vertical transportation.

Elisha Otis demo of his free-fall prevention mechanism, Crystal Palace

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Elevator safety brake demonstrated

Elisha Otis obtained a U.S. patent in 1861 for his "hoisting apparatus" and safety break, a catch that sprang open if a cable failed.

Elisha Otis demo of his free-fall prevention mechanism, Crystal Palace

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Test Site by Neetable t

Museum

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NYC Crystal Palace and Latting Tower

Constructed for the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, New York's Crystal Palace occupied the site behind the Croton Reservoir between Fifth and Sixth Avenues at 42nd St., today's Bryant Park. Crowned by a dome 100 feet in diameter, the cruciform structure of cast iron and glass prefigured the glass skyscrapers of midtown. It was destroyed by fire on October 5th 1858.

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Hudson Terminal Buildings

When completed in 1909, the pair of 22-story structures built for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad was the world's largest office building, covering a ground area of 70,000 square feet. The complex rose above the terminal connecting Jersey City and lower Manhattan; the Hudson & Manhattan tunnels later became the PATH system. The Hudson Terminal Buildings were demolished for the World Trade Center.

35

City Investing Building

The City Investing Company Building rose on the same block as the Singer tower and was completed the same year, when together the two represented the tallest and largest office buildings in the world.

City Investing Building, N.Y. Post, McCord, c. December 20 1907.

36

Latting Tower

The 315-foot iron-braced wood tower was erected for the 1853 New York World's Fair. Steam elevators accessed three observation platforms, affording panoramic views. Despite its popularity, the tower failed to pay off its debts and burned down in 1856.

Latting Observatory near 6th. Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd Street, New Yorkm Wiliam Naugle, Seiber & Shearman Robertson, 1853, Adapted from Wikimedia Commons:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Latting_Observatory.png

37

McCullough Shot Tower

Shot towers produced round bullets by dropping molten lead from a great height. In 1855, for the 175- foot McCullough Shot Tower at Centre and Pearl Streets, James Bogardus created a 8-tiered structure that carried an in-fill bruck wall entirely on the cast iron frame.

Centre Street Shot Tower, Hollyer Samuel, 1858. New York Public Library.

38

Oriel Chambers

The 5-story Oriel CHambers in Liverpool by the little know architect Peter Ellis was the first British building with a metal frame and a curtain wall of enlarged glass oriel windows.

Ignacio Fernádex Solla. “Is Oriel Chambers the First Curtain Wall Ever?” Façades Confidential. June 2013. https://facadesconfidential.blogspot.com/2013/06/is-first-first-curtain-wall-in-liverpool.html

39

Fireproof Floors

Fireproof construction became a great concern with the increasing height of buildings. This early system was published in 1870 in the Technologist shows wrought-iron floor beams enscased in concrete to protect them from heat. Non-combustible hollow tiles span between beams. Wood flooring and a plaster ceiling were placed on either side of the fireproof floor.

Fire Proof Floor Constructional Diagram. The Technologist, vol 1. 1870.

40

Drexel Building

Located at Wall and Broad streets, the Drexel Building, headquarters to financier J.P. Morgan, became the first office building in the world illuminated by electric lights. On September 4, 1882, Thomas Edison and the Directors of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York switched on lights powered by the Pearl Street generating station.

“Drexe, Building: J. Pierpont Morgan & Co.”--King's Views of NYSE 1897-1898, pg.42

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Chicago Building Code

Four years after the Great Fire, Chicago enacted a code intended to prevent another disaster. Unlike New York, embraced steel-frame construction, becoming the leader in innovative high-rise design.

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Chicago Frame

The grid of metal columns, beams, and girders that evolved into the skeleton of steel I-beams used in most 20th-century skyscrapers was largely the invention of multiple Chicago architects and engineers. The frame of the 1892 Unity Building is illustrated under construction in the book Industrial Chicago.

Unity Building under Construction, Industrial Chicago, 1892. Chicago History Museum, ICHi-23088.

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Pittsburgh Plate Glass

In an important step toward the development of glass curtain walls, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company began producing the first affordable plate glass. With the advent of more open steel-frame storefronts around 1900, panes of glass as large as 80 square feet were produced.

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New York City Building Code

This code revision was the first in New York to allow for metal-skeleton frames, but required minimum thicknesses of masonry–a conservatism based on concerns about fire. Masonry curtain walls were generally allowed to be 4 inches thinner than load-bearing walls of the same height, narrowing as they rose.

Curtain Wall thickness specifications, New York Building Code (1892). After Birkmire, Planning and Construction of High Office-Buildings.

Long described in textbooks at "the first skyscraper," the Home Insurance Building was a precursor of the true skyscraper, when it is defined as a tall building with steel-frame construction. Originally only nine stories, with two more added in 1890, the structure designed by William LeBaron Jenney employed the first metal frame of cast- and wrought-iron columns and beams, as well as steel I-beams. Above the sixth floor, Bessemer steel members were used for the first time outside of bridges.

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Carnegie Bros. Pocket Companion

With mills producing their own steel shapes, each had to provide designers and builders with a product catalog. This Pocket Companion for Carnegie Brothers illustrates the range of I-beams and includes detailed charts for designers to select beams by strength.

49

Hotel Chelsea

An early New York City private apartment cooperative, at 150 feet, the 12-story red brick building was the tallest residential structure in the city. Converted to a hotel in 1905, it has been famous through the years for its avant-garde residents

50

Ransome System

The patented system of reinforced concrete developed by Ernest Ransome used twisted iron rods to better bind with concrete, significantly improving its strength and efficiency. This and other patented reinforced concrete systems of Henry Turner and Julius and Albert Kahn later dominated the industry.

51

Washington Monument

Designed by architect Robert Mills in the 1840s, construction of the stone obelisk began in 1848, halted at half height in 1856, then resumed from 1876-1884. Achieving a height of 555 feet, the Washington Monument surpassed the Cologne Cathedral as the world's tallest structure–but only briefly. In 1889, the Eiffel Tower asserted the new age of metal construction.

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Rolled Steel Beams

Rather than creating beams by assembling plates together, U.S. manufacturers used large rollers to form molten steel into I-shaped beams for construction. At first, each mill designed its own shapes, but by 1896 the Association of American Steel Manufacturers standardized the shapes and their properties

53

Tower Building

Only eleven stories tall and 22 feet wide on Broadway, but stretching 159 feet to New St., the Tower Building employed the first metal-cage construction in New York, before the building code allowed it. Designed by architect Bradford Gilbert, it was demolished in 1914.

54

Tower Building

At 11 stories, it was not the tallest in the city, but with a frontage on Broadway of a mere 21.5 feet, it was extremely slender for its height. The novelty of its metal-cage construction was the subject of considerable attention in the popular press, as pundits predicted its collapse.

The NYC Building Code did not explicitly allow for skeleton-frame construction until 1892, but the Department of Buildings approved Gilbert's individual application. As author and engineer Donald Friedman explains, the Tower Building had a hybrid structural system: "the side walls were bearing at the top four levels of steel framing, but were carried below that point on a frame consisting of wrought-iron beams and cast-iron columns. In other words, the Tower Building was, structurally, a four-story bearing-wall building sitting on top of a seven-story skeleton frame. The overall building was noticeably slender and the weight of the bearing-wall structure at the top probably helped the frame below perform: cast-iron columns cannot handle tension well, and the weight of the upper-floor masonry served as a pre-stressing compression load in the columns below."

55

Revolving Doors

Theophilus Van Kannel invented the revolving door to increase efficiency of traffic in and out of skyscrapers, where the slight vacuum caused by air-flow up through the building's stairwells, elevator shafts, and chimneys made traditional doors difficult to open.

56

Louis Sullivan Essay: Kindergarten Chats

Often called "the father of the skyscraper" Chicago architect Louis Sullivan expressed the poetics of the skyscraper in his buildings and writings. In an 1896 essay "The Tall Building Artistically Considered," he wrote that the skyscraper "must be tall, every inch of it tall....It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line."

57

Barclay-Vesey Building

Also known as the New York Telephone Company Building, this 498-foot tall edifice was constructed as a switching center and office building for The New York Telephone Company. The bulky base, which rose directly from the lot lines, was only possible because of the switching machinery it contained; windows were unnecessary, so the entire internal core could be utilized. Ralph Walker used the mandated set-backs to create a well-lit office tower above the switching floors, beautifully matching form to function. The building's austere, vaguely historical, and emphatically vertical articulation further expressed its machine aesthetic. Yet the architect was no European Modernist; he sought to maintain "the human touch" in the building. While "the telephone was a machine technique," he remarked, "it also meant a communication of emotion." At the ground floor, the building provides a Guastovino-tiled arcade in place of the sidewalk, offering shelter and beauty to neighbors and tenants alike.

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Mills Building

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Exploring tall buildings as places of work

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Exploring tall buildings as investments in real estate

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Celebrating the City's rich architectural heritage

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Exploring tall buildings as products of technology

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Exploring tall buildings as sites of construction

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Examining the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines.

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Exploring tall buildings as places of residence

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Exploring tall buildings as objects of design

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Located in New York City, the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis

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The Great Chicago Fire

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37-24, 24th St, Suite 102, Long Island City, NY 11101

The Skyscraper Museum

IMAGE ALBUMS

1Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles ALBUM

2Mass Timber 101 ALBUM

3Fifth Avenue—Architecture and Society: History of America’s Street of Dreams ALBUM

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1
Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles ALBUM

2
Mass Timber 101 ALBUM

3
Fifth Avenue—Architecture and Society: History of America’s Street of Dreams ALBUM

4
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion ALBUM

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TALL TIMBER: Michael Green and the Evolution of Mass Timber ALBUM

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Mills Building

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Skyscraper Museum

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The Great Chicago Fire