St. Paul Building, New York, 1901:
[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Co.]
The Wikipedia entry is not kind:
The St. Paul Building was a skyscraper in New York City built in 1898 to designs by George B. Post that repeated the same Ionic order for each floor, to little cumulative effect. At 315 feet (96 m) it was one of the tallest skyscrapers of its era. The building was 26 stories tall. It was demolished without public expression of regret in 1958 in order to make way for the Western Electric Building.
Not, you might think, much of an improvement. Besides, this was before public expressions of regret over demolished buildings were a thing. In New York that only started in the Sixties, after the 1963 demolition of the Beaux-Arts Pennsylvania Station.
I think it's a lovely thing. It would be nice if they could more like that in London (and less of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Blackfriars)
Posted by: brian | April 14, 2017 at 07:53 AM