The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New YorkOnce the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Woolworth Building is noted for its striking but incongruous synthesis of Beaux-Arts architecture, fanciful Gothic ornamentation, and audacious steel-framed engineering. Here, in the first history of this great urban landmark, Gail Fenske argues that its design serves as a compelling lens through which to view the distinctive urban culture of Progressive-era New York. Fenske shows here that the building’s multiplicity of meanings reflected the cultural contradictions that defined New York City’s modernity. For Frank Woolworth—founder of the famous five-and-dime store chain—the building served as a towering trademark, for advocates of the City Beautiful movement it suggested a majestic hotel de ville, for technological enthusiasts it represented the boldest of experiments in vertical construction, and for tenants it provided an evocative setting for high-style consumption. Tourists, meanwhile, experienced a spectacular sightseeing destination and avant-garde artists discovered a twentieth-century future. In emphasizing this faceted significance, Fenske illuminates the process of conceiving, financing, and constructing skyscrapers as well as the mass phenomena of consumerism, marketing, news media, and urban spectatorship that surround them. As the representative example of the skyscraper as a “cathedral of commerce,” the Woolworth Building remains a commanding presence in the skyline of lower Manhattan, and the generously illustrated Skyscraper and the City is a worthy testament to its importance in American culture. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Woolworths Skyscraper | 11 |
Woolworth Modernity and the City | 45 |
Gilberts BeauxArts Skyscrapers | 79 |
Designing the Woolworth Building | 120 |
A RecordBreaking Feat of Modern Construction | 166 |
The Skyscraper as a City | 216 |
Common terms and phrases
advertising American Architect architectural Bank beautiful Beaux-Arts Broadway Builders called Cass Gilbert Collection Cass Gilbert Papers Cathedral century Chicago City city’s color Commerce Company Company’s completion composition consequence construction continued corporate Culture Custom described desire drawings early effect electrical elevator engineering experience F. W. Woolworth feet fig figure financial first five floor Frank Woolworth functioned Gothic headquarters height Historical Horowitz House important industrial January John July later light lower managers March mass N-YHS noted November office building opening Park Paul Photograph Place practice Press produced quote real estate Record retailing Scheme served sketch skyline skyscraper skyscraper’s social Society space Starrett steel story Street structural tenants terra cotta tion tower United University Press urban vertical visual West Street Wool Woolworth Building Woolworth Building’s worth York York City York’s