The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
Exhibition Credits
News PAPER Spires has benefited from the intelligence, experience, and generous spirit of many individuals who have shared their knowledge of the physical expression of the newspaper business and its building history, inside and out. Only about half of the buildings featured in the exhibition survive, and none are still used for their original purpose, either as "word factories" (to use David Dunlap's apt phrase) or as printing plants. Fortunately for the Museum, many of those who recall with awe the roar of the presses or the departments where hot metal type was cast into galleys, then lead cylinder plates, were happy to share their knowledge and memories of this vanished world.
From the New York Times, we are especially grateful to veteran reporter David Dunlap, who made it his mission to document the history of the Times Annex at 229 W. 43rd Street by safeguarding the series of the paper's publications on the Annex and by roaming the building for a month after it was sold and vacated to take photographs and check closets (where, in fact, he found one abandoned lead cylinder plate, which has been lent to this exhibition). Equally generous with his knowledge and personal collection of artifacts was Allan M. Siegal, a former assistant managing editor of the Times. Daniel Okrent, a Museum trustee and the first Public Editor at the Times made important connections. The New York Times Company kindly lent the model of its 1904 tower and made available many images for the exhibition.
Likewise, scholars and professionals who have a deep historical knowledge of the architecture and engineering of the late 19th and early 20th century have kindly shared their research and expertise: Lee Gray, a professor and associate dean of the College of Arts + Architecture of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Professor Kathryn Holliday from the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington; Donald Friedman and Derek Trelstad, structural engineers who are also historians of building technology; Gideon Sorkin also explained structural issues.
Archivists Jennifer B. Lee of Columbia University's Rare Books and Manuscripts and Janet Parks of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Ellen Sowchek of Pace University, and Elizabeth Dunn of Duke University were especially generous with their help. Collector Mark Tomasko, as usual, had rare items to lend. The firm HLW International, the firm that traces its history back to Leopold, then Cyrus Eidlitz, architect of the Times Tower, lent important material from their archive. Many other individuals gave invaluable assistance. The Museum thanks its interns and staff: Sarah Cloonan, Rick Fudge, Ondel Hylton, Casey Jung, Georgi Kyorlenski, Nicole Lau, Kayla Loveman, Brendan Pettersen, Kate Reutershan, Ellie Rubin, Angela Serratore, Brendan Shera, Mariel Villere, Diana Wong, and volunteers Gideon Sorkin and Tatiana Hodapp.
Carol Willis, Director and Curator.
This exhibition is sponsored, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
This exhibition is sponsored, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
