Picture the tallest building on earth, a title this tower held for seventeen years, one you can still see today. When the Woolworth Building was completed in 1913, its 792 feet made it the tallest building on earth, a record it held for seventeen years until the Chrysler Building surpassed it in 1930. Frank Woolworth, the five-and-dime retail magnate who paid thirteen and a half million dollars for it in cash, commissioned architect Cass Gilbert to design a Gothic cathedral translated into office space.
Gilbert delivered terra-cotta gargoyles, pointed arches, a soaring lobby of green marble and gilded mosaics that earned the building its nickname, the Cathedral of Commerce. The mayor who dedicated it called it a beacon of progress. President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in Washington that night to illuminate it with eighty thousand light bulbs.
Walk up to the entrance and look at the lobby if you can; inside, a cartoonish terra-cotta caricature of Woolworth himself can still be found counting nickels.