Title: Lower Manhattan 1908
Subtitle: Financial district, 1908
Text: The popular guidebook King's Views of New York pictured this panorama of Lower Manhattan in 1908. The caption boasted of the economic power represented in the skyscrapers of the financial district "where the business interests center in enormous steel, fireproof buildings that have risen, most of them within the decade, to accommodate the rapidly increasing demands for office room in the new world center." Noting the headquarters of railroads, manufacturing concerns, and business enterprises of all sorts, King's tallied 216 bank and trust companies, 162 fire-insurance companies, and 223 life-insurance corporations in the district.
The charming aerial exaggerates the scale of the multiple bridges across the East River and the aging east-side waterfront with some docks that still moor sailing ships. The Hudson River waterfront with its steam ships shows more recent development, although the Whitehall Building on West Street at Battery Park has not yet been expanded.
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