Equitable Life Assurance Building

This photo, taken around 1906, shows Equitable Life Assurance Building, which was built in 1870 and is sometimes considered to be the world's first skyscraper. Topping out at 130 feet and seven stories, it is tiny by modern standards, but when it was first built, it was the tallest non-church building in the world, and the first office building to include passenger elevators. It remained the tallest non-church building in the world until 1884, when it was surpassed by the Home Insurance Building in Chicago. Today, the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, is about 21 times the height of the Equitable Building. Today, there is another Equitable Building on the same site as this first one, at 120 Broadway. But, what happened to this majestic edifice, once promoted as a "fire-proof building"?


Naturally, the "fire-proof building" was gutted by a fire on January 9, 1912. The firefighting efforts were ineffective because of the cold temperatures, and the water ended up just freezing to the building, clinging to the hollow remains. The site, as mentioned above, was rebuilt in 1915, and that building still stands on Broadway today.

Lost Manhattan

While looking through some old photos of New York City on the Library of Congress website, I came across a panoramic view of New York City from around 1908. The view was taken from somewhere in New York Harbor, from about the same angle from which I took pictures of Manhattan, from the Staten Island Ferry last weekend. I wondered how many of those buildings, which dominated the skyline 100 years ago, still existed. Then, as I continued going through the Library of Congress photos, I came across hundreds of other Manhattan landmarks from the same time period of 1900-1920, some of which still exist, and others of which have long since been demolished.

My goal in this blog is not only to highlight some of the photos that I found on the Library of Congress website, but also to fill in the details of what has happened in the intervening 100+ years to the subjects of the photos. When possible, I will also include my own photos to show what the subject or site looks like today.