The Cathedral of Commerce — tallest building in the world for seventeen years, paid for in cash out of a five-and-ten-cent chain, with a lobby most visitors never see.
Paid for in cash
Frank Winfield Woolworth built a retail empire out of shops where nothing cost more than ten cents, and in 1913 he paid $13.5 million in cash for a Gothic tower on Broadway because he did not want a mortgage. It was the tallest building in the world at 792 feet and stayed so until the Chrysler Building passed it in 1930.
Cass Gilbert designed it as a cathedral rather than an office block — flying buttresses, gargoyles, tracery, a crown of copper that has gone green. A clergyman at the opening dinner called it the Cathedral of Commerce and the name stuck, though it was meant more approvingly than it sounds now.
President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in Washington on the opening night and lit 80,000 bulbs at once.
The lobby
It is one of the great interiors in New York and hardly anyone gets to see it. A vaulted arcade in golden Skyros marble, Byzantine-style glass mosaic on the ceiling, a stained glass skylight, and murals of Commerce and Labour.
The best detail is a set of carved grotesques in the corbels of the mezzanine, portraits of the people who built it: Gilbert holding a model of the tower, Woolworth counting nickels, the engineer with a girder, the rental agent shaking hands on a lease. It is a private joke carved permanently into the most expensive building in the world at the time.
The lobby was open to the public until 2001. It has been closed since. The only legitimate access now is the guided tour run by Gilbert’s great-granddaughter’s company — thirty, sixty or ninety minutes, small groups, booked well in advance. If Gothic revival or early skyscraper history interests you at all, take the ninety.
The top
The upper thirty floors were converted to apartments in the 2010s, including a five-storey penthouse in the copper crown that was listed at $110 million. Woolworth’s own private office on the 40th floor, done out in the Empire style with a portrait of Napoleon, has been preserved.
Looking at it from outside
The tower reads best from a little distance, because the setbacks and the crown are the interesting part and from the pavement you see mostly the base. City Hall Park directly opposite is the right vantage — from the middle of the park you get the full elevation, and the park has benches.
At night the crown is lit and the colour changes for holidays.
It sits within a few minutes’ walk of the Brooklyn Bridge approach, City Hall, and the Tweed Courthouse, and the whole cluster makes a decent hour of walking in a part of the city most visitors cross rather than stop in.
More Skyscrapers & Views
Empire State Building
Built in 410 days during the Depression and empty for years afterwards. The 86th-floor deck is open air, which is what the newer decks in Midtown are not.
Chrysler Building
The best Art Deco tower in the world, and you cannot go up it. The lobby is open, the crown is not, and it is still worth the detour.
Top of the Rock
The deck to pick if you are only doing one, for the simple reason that the Empire State Building is in the photograph rather than under your feet.