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.

Hughson Hawley, 1911

The Flat Iron Building
Hughson Hawley Perspective, 1911; Private Collection

Hughson Hawley Perspective, 1911 Private Collection

In early February 1911, shortly after his office finalized the design of the Woolworth Building, Cass Gilbert gave their in-house perspective to the freelance delineator Hughson Hawley for "coloring." Hawley's version became the definitive image of the tower used in the public relations campaign to draw worldwide attention to the project.

Gilbert described Hawley to Woolworth as "the most experienced artist in New York in this class." Having begun his career as a theatrical scene painter in Exeter, England, Hawley arrived in New York in 1879, and his illustrations soon appeared in the city's literary journals, newspapers, and mass-market magazines. Hawley became especially popular among leading New York architects, creating perspectives for Ernest Flagg, George B. Post, and Trowbridge & Livingston.

The Flat Iron Building
Hughson Hawley Perspective, 1911; Private Collection

Woolworth copyrighted Hawley's painting and on May 4, 1911, distributed a photograph of it to the press, hoping to capture front-page coverage in the highly illustrated Sunday papers. Indeed, the Hawley drawing graced three full columns of the page one of the Real Estate section of the May 7th edition of New York Times under the headline "Woolworth Building Will Be World's Greatest Skyscraper."

Woolworth also independently produced a copyrighted version of Hawley's rendering printed as a giant chromolithographic trade card for wide distribution. Sparkling white with gilded roofs set against a blue-and-rose-colored sky, Hawley's Woolworth Building established Gilbert's design even before construction as a spectacular and widely-recognized visual phenomenon, part high-style commodity and part popular entertainment.

NEXT: CONSTRUCTION