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.

MAPPING REAL ESTATE VALUE

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land maps
Bank of America Building, 1926

Given its high land values and strong demand for prime office space, Wall Street was surprisingly slow to give way to skyscrapers. But when the change came, the older structures collapsed as if on a fault line and were replaced by major towers of 50 to 70 stories. This map shows all the high-rises under construction in the financial district in the short span of peak of the 1920s building cycle, 1928 to 1931.

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48 Wall Street


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The base map is a 1927 land book with plates tiled together to cover the southern tip of Manhattan.

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1 Wall Street

Pictured installed, above, are the major towers of 1928-1931 (clockwise from the top): Bank of America at 44 Wall and the Bank of New York at 48 Wall; 63 Wall; 40 Wall; 1 Wall/ Irving Trust Company; and the Equitable Assurance Company at 15 Broad Street, with an entrance at 35 Wall.

 

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63 Wall Street, 1938

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23 Wall Street, JP Morgan Building, Weiskopf collection

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40 Wall Street










NEXT: EAST RIVER END

Pre-1850 History of Wall Street
Dutch Origins
New Amsterdam: The Castello Plan
British New York
Early 18th Century
The Slave Market
City Hall
East River Commerce
Fire of 1776
Trinity Churches
Mansions and Banks
Wall Street in 1825
The Great Fire of 1835
Customs House and Merchants Exchange
A Street of Banks
Lowenstrom's Panorama-1850 South
Lowenstrom's Panorama-1850 North
New York in 1850
Fortune 1930
Monuments of Wall Street
Early Photographs of Wall Street
Vertical Wall Street
SOUTH SIDE:
1 Wall Street
23 and 63 Wall Street
Unbuilt Stock Exchange
NORTH SIDE:
14 Wall Street
40 Wall Street
60 Wall Street
120 Wall Street
1928-1931 Towers
East River End
Historical Land Maps