The Singer Building, 1908

The Singer Building was for a short while the world's tallest building. Designed by architect Ernest Flagg for the Singer Manufacturing Company - of sewing machine fame - it was completed in 1908 and stood at 612 feet - towering over downtown Broadway New York for almost 60 years.

It is a prime example of what I am calling a 'New World Freak' and demonstrates brilliantly the freedom of American architects at the start of the 20th century to work with whatever 'old world' historical elements they wanted and apply them to their 'new world' context - creating incredible new hybrid architecture in the process that was frequently both restrained and flamboyant, conventional and surprising, everyday and surreal and good and bad taste.

The building's finely detailed lower 12 storeys were from the outside pretty conventional as Edwardian offices go, matching the accepted scale of old Broadway, however by the time its slim-line tower had lept up 47 floors it was positively Vaudeville! Its show stopping climax being a spectacular weighty mansard dome with Second Empire French roof with dormers and lots of heavy Baroque details.

The Singer Building, 1967.
(c) Historic American Building Survey

In the 1900s lower Manhattan was a breeding ground for experiments in skyscraper design where commercial ambition, a rampant property market and chaotic street plan forced architecture into frequently bizarre forms. Views from the Hudson River - those greeting millions of emigrants and new world arrivals - during this time reveal an almost fantasy cityscape of other-worldly classical domes, turrets, blocks, roofs, columns and spikes scaled up beyond recognition.

Despite its iconic status amongst New Yorkers and its incredibly rich architecture inside and out, the Singer Building was destroyed in 1967 after the city's Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) chose not to designate it. It was replaced by 1 Liberty Plaza by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.