Singer Building

Taken between 1910 and 1920, this photo shows the Singer Building, the next building in New York City to hold the record for the tallest building in the world. It held the record for only two years though, from 1908 to 1909, before being surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Tower in Midtown. It was the world headquarters for the Singer Manufacturing Company, of sewing machine fame.

Unlike most of New York's other early skyscrapers, the Singer Building was constructed with a large base, but a relatively narrow tower. This went along with the common architectural technique of building setbacks for skyscrapers, but it also meant that the 35-story tower above the 12-story base was tall, but had very limited office space.

In 1961, Singer sold the building and moved their headquarters uptown. Because it had such limited office space, it was demolished in 1968 and replaced with 1 Liberty Plaza, a nondescript 54 story skyscraper with much more space, but much less aesthetic appeal. Located directly across from the World Trade Center, 1 Liberty Plaza received light damage when the Twin Towers fell. Incidentally, the Singer Tower set the record for the tallest building ever demolished, a record that was only broken when the Twin Towers fell in 2001. The Singer Tower remains the tallest building ever peacefully demolished.

New York World Building

The Equitable Life Insurance Building was the tallest in the world for 14 years, until it was overtaken by the Home Insurance Building in Chicago. However, that building, in turn, lost its title to the New York World Building in 1890, which at 309 feet was over twice the size of the Home Insurance Building. In the foreground in the 1905 photo above is New York City Hall, and the World Building is directly across Park Row, which was also known as Newspaper Row because of the number of newspapers that were headquartered there. The World Building was, obviously, owned by the New York World, the newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer (for whom the Pulitzer Prize is named). It is also argued by some that the World Series was named after the newspaper.

This photo, which appears to have been taken the same day as the one above from approximately the same spot, shows City Hall Park with the "Newspaper Row" buildings in the background. From left to right, they are the New York World Building, New York Tribune Building, New York Times Building, and the Potter Building, which was built on the site of the World's former headquarters.

Now, the last question is, what became of this early pioneer of skyscraper architecture?


It was demolished in 1955 to expand the approaches to the Brooklyn Bridge. It would have been in the right hand side of this photo, which was taken February 2012.