Title: Lower Manhattan 1920
Subtitle: Lower Manhattan 1920
Text: An aerial view of Manhattan around 1920 shows the sweeping expanse of the broad, unbridged Hudson and makes clear the importance of the working waterfront, which stretches up the island. Midtown has yet to sprout many skyscrapers, and downtown remains the dominant office district.
On the Lower Manhattan skyline, a pyramid of new towers concentrated along Broadway and around Wall Street, the heart of the financial district. The acme, at City Hall Park, was the Woolworth Building, tallest in the world at 792-feet on its completion in 1913. In 1915, the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway became the largest office building in the world with a rentable area of 1.2 million square feet. This massive box rose sheer for forty stories and covered the entire block. It shaded smaller buildings for blocks around and became a major factor in the passage of the city's first zoning law in 1916, which afterward required setbacks.
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