Narrator: Like giant exclamation marks,
Skyscrapers punctuate the story of our urban development.
People always want to reach.
There's something heavenly about it,
And people have wanted to race for height forever.
Narrator: Developed by the pioneers of architecture
In the late 19th century...
They were, at the time, the equivalent
Of our going to the moon.
Narrator: ...These magnificently designed tower giants
Urbanized some of the greatest cities in the world.
It's about defying gravity and leaving a sign of humanity.
Narrator: From chicago to london, from tokyo to dubai,
Skyscrapers have, and continue to define,
Our contemporary way of life.
-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
♪
Baker: The reason we want to go higher --
I think it's very deep inside us.
You know, it's part of our mythology -- the tower of babel.
When you go hiking, you want to see
What's over the top of the hill.
It's very, very central to our being.
As engineers and architects, it's a great way
To show our technological feat to reach the sky.
And it's also a tale of constant evolution,
Constant improvement, and progress, honestly.
♪
Narrator: Skylines are the result of technological
And urban advancement throughout our world's greatest cities.
From generation to generation,
We are compelled to build safer, smarter, and higher.
And nowhere is this legacy more evident
Than the windy city of chicago.
You can look at a place like los angeles,
Which is known for its entertainment industry.
You can look at new york, which will be finance.
Miami would be fashion, and chicago really is architecture.
Part of the great thing the architecture community has done
Is to always build differently, so everything is sort of a riot
Of different styles and different eras.
Everything holds up.
♪
Narrator: In the mid-19th century, chicago grew exponentially
As people migrated to the midwest
Seeking new opportunities.
♪
Chicago's the first modern city.
It's the first city to be conceived in the modern way.
And chicago had the fortuitous, but also the infamous,
Start because of the fire.
[ siren wails ]
Reporter: A great fire struck
The sprawling lakeside town of chicago,
And threatened to wipe its very name off the map.
And the fire basically destroyed everything in chicago,
Which at that time was simply wood-frame buildings.
But it had the opportunity
To really think anew about the city,
And what it means to build in a modern way.
Narrator: Within six weeks after the fire,
300 new buildings were on the rise.
Reporter: Some of chicago's new buildings were the first skyscrapers,
Marking a new departure in architecture.
Wood: When the sort of phoenix rises from the ashes,
It's architecture that saves chicago.
And what happened in chicago
By destroying all of that city center acreage,
Zukowsky: It gave the opportunity for architects who lived in chicago,
But also architects who lived elsewhere
And needed work to come to chicago.
Wells: And this is after the civil war.
Guys like daniel burnham, william le baron jenney --
They knew how to put a bridge up very quickly
Out of whatever they could find.
Armstrong: Architecture as a profession didn't exist,
So it was engineers who did buildings.
They had a wide variety of influences,
But mostly they were neo- classically trained architects
Who had either studied abroad
Or had been studying in the east coast at schools like m.I.T.
Narrator: The city became a training ground
For up-and-coming architects -- a talented group of individuals
Known as the first chicago school.
These early pioneers in chicago
Were very pragmatic individuals --
Businessmen, commerce-driven.
Chicago always has been, and presumably always will be.
The famed chicago school group of architects --
Commercial architects, business architects,
Designing business buildings for businessmen --
Also had a kind of mantra or ethic about pragmatism,
About an american character for their buildings.
Narrator: Between 1880 and 1890,
Chicago's population doubled to more than a million.
But land in the city, specifically in the loop area,
Was limited.
So real estate prices skyrocketed.
Property owners, having paid close to a million dollars
For their quarter-acre slice of the city,
Needed to capitalize on their investments.
The city had nowhere to go but up.
In the 1880s, the home insurance building
Was the tallest in chicago's business district --
An important architectural landmark
Until its demolition in 1931.
The home insurance building is widely considered
The world's first skyscraper,
Because the walls of the building
Were liberated from any structural role.
And that meant the entire kind of structural weight
Of the building was taken with a lightweight metal frame.
Narrator: Chicago's first buildings featured load-bearing walls
Made out of brick and stone.
Buildings supported by fireproof metal frames
Distributed the weight of each floor more evenly,
So walls could be considerably thinner.
Bessemer steel, which is more flexible than cast iron,
Made significant advancements in structural engineering.
Streetcars, railways,
And subways contributed to the changing urban landscape,
Transporting working professionals
From suburban neighborhoods
To centralized locations in the city.
You know, before you had the structural frames,
You could only go as high as those thick
Masonry walls would let you go
'cause your walls would be so thick.
Once steel was invented as a way to hold,
Essentially, a skyscraper,
All of a sudden you had the ability
To open up those floors to real estate and go up.
♪
Narrator: The home insurance building was built in 1885.
Its old-school exterior blended in with the streetscape,
Standing tall at 12 stories high.
It was designed by william le baron jenney,
The father of the american skyscraper.
And there's an interesting story about his inspiration.
He was at home, and his wife had brought in lunch.
And she put a real heavy book on this bird cage.
And you'd think, "well, you know, that thing would crash."
But then he realized that this so-called cage construction,
You can put a lot of weight on
Without having heavy walls on the outside.
So that really the two key technologies were the steel,
Which allowed buildings to go much higher
In a way that hadn't been possible
Using masonry load-bearing walls,
And the elevator which was able to transport these people.
Narrator: Steel frame construction made buildings
Stronger than ever before.
But it wasn't until elisha graves otis
Revealed his transportation idea that technological advancements
Were able to lift skyscrapers to daring new heights.
Elisha graves otis was born in 1811 in vermont.
He was an unknown inventor.
One uncommon belief is that he invented the elevator.
He actually invented the safety brake which made elevators safe.
The safety brake --
He mounted a spring connected to the hoist rope.
In the event of a failure,
There were ratchets that were mounted to the sides.
If it lost tension, it would enact the ratchets
To close and clamp down on the guide rail,
Stopping the elevator in motion --
Thus, keeping the elevator from plunging to the ground.
At the world fair, he brought the full elevator
Into the building and then he got on himself.
As the crowd gathered, he took an axe and cut the hoist rope.
The crowd gasped, but the elevator did not collapse
Because the safety mechanism worked --
Clamped to the side, stopped the elevator from free-falling,
And he announced, "all safe."
Barr: Until the 1880s, I'd say, the top floors
Were the worst floors -- were the least desirable floors,
Because people had to travel up the stairwell
To get to those places.
And then, when they introduced the elevator
After the civil war, elevators became common
Technologies in office buildings, hotel buildings.
Then that changed the dynamic,
And people were really interested
In working on the higher floors.
So all of that infrastructure came at around the same time.
And once it was in place,
The buildings just started growing enormously.
The reliance building in chicago is a more interesting example
Of what was the beginning of skyscrapers,
Because it used steel probably to a larger extent.
Then the concept of having a rigid frame or a braced frame
That was able to stabilize itself
Against the wind was more evident.
Narrator: With its steel superstructure, the reliance building in chicago
Was a flawless representation
Of the chicago school of construction.
Designed by daniel burnham and charles atwood,
The 16-story commercial tower was the first skyscraper
To use large sheets of plate glass
That made up the majority of the building's surface area.
Apart from reducing the overall weight
And cost of the building,
The glass increased the building's overall efficiency.
If you have bigger glass,
You could have more light coming into the building.
And therefore, you can get more efficiency --
Productivity from the workers in the building.
Armstrong: At this high, there was no air-conditioning systems.
Electric lighting was incandescent lighting.
So natural ventilation and daylight
Were really important in these early office buildings.
Narrator: The chicago school's solution to the light and ventilation
Problem was eventually resolved through the development
Of the chicago window --
A large, fixed plane of plate glass with moveable sidelights.
As the chicago school became pioneers
Of both innovation and collaboration,
They were forced to search for new ways
To solve complex problems.
Narrator: In the late 19th century,
A new era of structural engineering was born
Using the principles of the chicago school of architecture.
These american pioneers of design inspired
A new wave of possibilities, one of which was the skyscraper.
The increased availability of steel,
The invention of the elevator safety brake,
And the use of plate glass windows
Allowed structural engineers to dream bigger,
Stronger, and higher.
Armstrong: Another aspect of the chicago school was,
I think, the significance of the relationship
Between the engineer and the architect.
The engineer was entirely incorporated into that firm.
Narrator: Another concept attributed to the chicago school
Was the idea that form follows function --
That the shape of a building should relate to its function
And purpose.
This artistic expression of a skyscraper
Was married to an idea about what an american ethic was --
Not something recognizably appropriated
From european tradition,
But something that was native american
Because a kind of theory or ideology of the chicago school.
Wood: You really have to stand back and appreciate
Just what the architects have sort of done
Over 100-plus years -- what they've really given us.
Narrator: In 1893, economic depression hit the u.S.
Financial panic started in new york,
But quickly spread across the rest of the country.
500 banks closed their doors.
15,000 businesses folded.
Surplus office space in chicago led to the council
Backing a plan that helped those in the real estate game counter
Their diminishing profits.
They imposed a limit on the height of any new buildings
In the business district,
Effectively flatlining the skyscraper boom
That was keeping the heart of the city alive.
Philadelphia, los angeles, and washington, d.C.
Were also affected by the panic.
But new york's developers and investors remained confident.
The real estate market may have chilled,
But the skyscraper industry refused to be put on ice.
Barr: So, my reading of the 1893 panic
As it influenced new york city's real estate market was,
They couldn't really stop this juggernaut
Which was the growth of new york city --
Growth of the modern american metropolis.
♪
New york city has always been a merchant city.
It always had an eye towards commerce.
Willis: It's the east coast nexus,
But also the european nexus of connections for trade,
As it had been all through the 19th century.
So by the 1870s, new york has almost a million population
And it is a driving engine of capitalism.
Narrator: In 1892, the local building code
Which required the use of masonry
For fireproofing had changed,
Allowing new york builders to follow chicago's lead
And implement steel frame construction.
And then, that created vast quantities of new real estate
Which further produced economic growth
And attracted more businesses.
And then you have these sort of positive feedback cycles
Where new growth generates more growth.
Narrator: Manhattan's skyline was evolving,
But the city experienced many harsh critiques.
But none were as polarizing as the criticisms daniel burnham
Received for the flatiron building.
A city that is defined by the grid in manhattan,
Here we have a triangular building
Which is informed by the diagonal of 5th avenue.
Narrator: The new york times called it a "monstrosity,
A stingy piece of pie,
The greatest inanimate troublemaker in new york."
Its architecture is, in a way, like a greek column with a base,
A shaft of multiple stories,
And a capital kind of decoration at the top of the building.
Narrator: Shaped like a right-angled triangle,
Its prow measured six feet wide.
The flatiron building towered over the street
At 285 feet tall,
A daring departure from the heavy block-like base structures
That typically gave tall buildings
At that time an aura of stability.
It was also incorporating those technologies
Of stiff frames and rigid construction,
'cause it was a fairly slender building for those days.
It sort of demonstrated the essence
Of what a skyscraper needs to do structurally, as well.
Narrator: Even though engineers were confident in their design,
Critics believed that the building
Created a dangerous wind tunnel
And could possibly knock the building down.
Marfella: There was also an episode where apparently,
A courier was washed away from the footpath
As a result of the wind hitting the tower, coming down the side,
And sweeping through the footpath.
And the poor boy was then killed by an automobile
That was coming on the street.
So it gives the sense that a skyscraper also
Had an impact on their surroundings.
Narrator: While many new yorkers were curious
About the windy controversy around the flatiron,
Others were captivated by the building itself,
Igniting the city's passion for architecture
And a distinctive sense of style.
Armstrong: The flatiron building's an interesting case.
Certainly, daniel burnham designed the flatiron building,
But I think that the iconography of the flatiron
Is decisively new york.
Marfella: The flatiron, in the history of architecture,
Was one of those moments where suddenly the impact
Of a tall building on a city was realized.
But there was also this postcard quality of the building
That you could just use to say, "hey, this is new york.
Look at that."
Narrator: The flat iron became the most talked-about building
Of its time,
Inspiring masses of architects and engineers
In their quest to build to the sky.
In america in the early 20th century,
A new wave of innovative
Building construction burst onto the scene.
These advancements in technology allowed designers
And architects to take more risks,
Which led to a new phase in skyscraper-building.
In the hay day, the golden age of the skyscraper in america,
There was this incredible self-confidence.
They're about pride and they're about doing something well,
And something that will endure over time.
Narrator: Throughout time, humans have always
Tried to reach for the sky.
From the beginning of their invention to today,
Skyscrapers have been built as visual representations
Of a city's growth, a country's power,
And a symbol of success of the individual who developed them.
Ali: We always try to reach for the sky,
Because people are ambitious.
We have something called human spirit.
Why do people climb mountains?
Why the quest for flight, to defy gravity, to ascend?
I think it's human nature.
As engineers, building high up is fun.
It's innovative, and it also gives us a challenge
And an opportunity.
Malott: I grew up in suburbia. I know what it's like.
You drive in a car, you know, houses are spread apart.
So the idea of compacting the way that we live
Is a huge positive,
And the skyscraper going up is a big part
Of how we compact a city.
Armstrong: Today, we have cities that are mega cities.
Populations exceed 20 million people, and they're growing.
Tall buildings, in that respect,
Have become almost a necessity rather than an option.
Ascher: So if you and I want to live in the same piece of land,
The only way we're going to be able to do that
Is by living above or below each other.
So it's the same thing with renting office space.
If everybody wants to be in a particular market,
There's enough demand to build up.
And the most basic reason is profit,
And that equation will never change.
You know, total development value
Less total cost equals developer's profit.
♪
Narrator: At the turn of the century, skyscrapers were beginning
To dominate the manhattan skyline.
The city and its population were rapidly growing.
As more and more immigrants began to settle in america,
The lower east side had become
The most densely populated region in the city.
I would say that parallel to the growth of businesses
Was the need for transportation innovations,
And transportation and infrastructure investments.
So the brooklyn bridge becomes one of the first key
Attempts to sort of link brooklyn with lower manhattan.
It would allow for people to kind of commute.
They walk over the bridge, and it eliminated the ferry.
And then by the turn of the 20th century,
New york city starts building its famous subway system.
Narrator: Construction above ground could barely keep up
With the number of people migrating to the city.
Everyone wanted a piece of the big apple
And its promise of wealth and opportunity.
New york soon became known as the city of skyscrapers.
In the hay day, the golden age of the skyscraper in america,
There was this incredible self-confidence.
They're about pride and they're about doing something well,
And something that will endure over time.
Narrator: As architects and engineers became more familiar
With requirements of the city,
Buildings became more sophisticated.
These bold pioneers of design were fearless.
The singer manufacturing company
Was one of the first to inspire architectural change.
At the time, the singer tower was projected
To be the tallest building in the world.
These buildings are done a floor a week.
It's astonishing.
And then, quickly clad in terra cotta of some kind.
You can just imagine somebody looking at this
And looking at a floor a week,
And having a building occupied in a matter of months,
Which is absolutely staggering.
Narrator: Ernest flagg, the architect who designed the singer tower,
Was one of the most outspoken champions
Of urban building reform.
He believed that skyscraper towers more than 10
To 15 stories high should be set back from the street,
Allowing the lower levels of the building to occupy
Only one quarter of the lot.
At 612 feet high, singer's new corporate headquarters building
Was revered by critics as the boldest expression
Of new york's architectural construction.
But shortly after the groundbreaking building
Opened its doors in 1908,
It soon lost its spot as the world's tallest building
As new architects and engineers
Began to push the design envelope.
A year later, the metropolitan life tower in lower manhattan
Became the new front runner.
The building's architect, napoleon lebrun,
Believed style was more important than innovation --
That tall buildings should reflect longevity and stability.
With its slender column, high-pitched roof,
And domed lantern,
The met life tower was seen as an architectural gem
And became a symbol of the company's success.
Marfella: Today, we recognize this crown as an element of the skyline.
It's a symbolic representation of what the city is about.
Willis: So the buildings did advertise themselves.
They advertised the business,
But they also accommodated the growing population of workers
That needed to be at the city center.
Ascher: When new york was first colonized,
People's place of home and work were essentially the same.
They might have had their shop down on the ground floor,
But they lived upstairs.
And then over time as neighborhoods evolved,
People didn't necessarily want to live where they worked.
So the minute you segregated work and home,
You started developing an office culture.
Narrator: This new societal shift
Makes skyscrapers a lucrative investment,
And would boost behemoths of industry like met life
To become even more profitable.
Narrator: By the end of the 19th century, the met life insurance company
Became the largest insurer in the united states.
Due to its rapid growth,
The met life insurance company tower was commissioned to serve
As the company's new headquarters in lower manhattan.
To some, the decision to move the company north
Of the business district seemed like a bold move.
But the decision proved to be a success.
By 1905, when the met life building
Needed additional space,
The company found it most cost effective
To purchase tenants' leases.
Vice president haley fiske, who worked as an attorney
For the company's insurance department,
Took an interest in the skyscraper.
Mr. Fiske called it an advertisement
That didn't stem the company a cent,
Because the tenants footed the bill.
Cass gilbert gave us the moniker of the skyscraper
As "the machine that made the land pay."
And the woolworth building was called
The cathedral of commerce --
Such was its tie to economics, to finance,
That kind of gave rise to its construction.
Narrator: By 1910, the woolworth company drew up plans
For a headquarters building.
Surpassing the 700-foot met life insurance skyscraper,
The woolworth building soon outranked its predecessor.
Woolworth got this idea of merchandise should sell itself.
And then he invented this idea of the five-and-dime store,
Where everything in there was a nickel or a dime.
And he didn't require the sales people to be gifted
At salesmanship.
All they had to do was ring up the cash register,
So it was just a wholly different concept of selling.
He didn't immediately come to the idea
Of having the biggest skyscraper in the world,
But then the singer building went up.
And then later on,
The metropolitan life building was built.
So he decided that,
"I've got to have a building bigger than they had."
Narrator: Sitting on one of the most prominent corners
In downtown manhattan,
Woolworth had built himself an extravagant trophy building.
Complete with a grand arcade entrance,
Marble walls and floors,
Tiffany elevator doors, and 29 elevators,
The building had opulent features.
Ascher: And so the rise of the skyscraper
Through the sort of companies
That put up those very, very tall ones
In the early part of the 20th century,
You know, spoke to who was controlling things at that time.
Narrator: At its completion, the 792-foot, 58-story building
Ended up costing close to $13.5 million to produce.
Woolworth paid for the building in cash.
The most important thing to understand
About a tall building under construction is it's almost --
Imagine a reverse engineering of the assembly chain...
When you have machinery and product that moves across,
And you have workers always doing the same thing
In the same place.
Tall buildings are a different dynamic,
Where you have someone doing always the same thing
But moving in space in a corkscrew fashion.
So you constantly move from place to place on the floor,
And then from one floor to the other.
Reporter #2: They must have wire cables for nerves.
We see these photographs of them wandering along
These steel beams, which are truly terrifying.
But we must realize also that the nature
Of fixing steel beams,
Which didn't involve any scaffolding,
Was to rivet them with hot rivets.
Marfella: The beams had to be lined up,
And then the rivets had to be heated up on-site in a furnace,
Thrown to a catcher, and then fed into a hole.
Then had to be kept in place on one side, punched on the other.
Then the rivet would shrink and keep the steel together.
So you can imagine the amount of labor involved,
And the amount of risk and safety associated with that.
Douglas: I mean, they had all kinds of safety procedures,
But you're working in certain places where the building
Is just steel girders and so on and so forth.
It's possible to fall off of them.
And if you think walking along a dry steel beam is dangerous,
Imagine what it must've been like in even a light breeze
And a drizzle coming down,
To walk along a slippery beam in a 100-story building.
Narrator: Many new yorkers viewed skyscrapers
As inspirational monuments
That represented a city's prosperity.
But others saw them as unnecessary monsters
That challenged the beauty and essence of the city.
Yet, only a select few stirred up quite a controversy.
Narrator: Located in the heart of manhattan's financial district,
The equitable life insurance building was considered
One of the most groundbreaking skyscrapers of the century.
With its skeletal steel frame,
Lightweight fireproof construction,
And passenger elevators,
The building was considered an engineering first --
Famously known as the first office building.
Boubekri: The equitable building, which is still existing today
And functioning, is basically a sort of a u-shaped building
That took a whole city block
And it was built like a monolithic rectangular shape.
It was a 40-story building -- you know,
The vertical extrusion of a floor plate
Which created a massive, hulking block.
Boubekri: And people didn't like it
Because it starting casting shadows
On several blocks around it, depending on the time of day.
So people went out and really demanded for air
And light in the streets.
Oldfield: And for many people, this was enough was enough.
And this ushered in a very famous piece of legislation
Called the 1916 new york zoning law.
Narrator: The zoning act of 1916 imposed a mathematical formula
For how tall a building could rise before it was forced
To become progressively narrower.
Only when a building's upper footprint was reduced
To 25% of its lot size on the ground
Could remaining floors stretch as far as developers wanted.
So new york had still retained this idea
That you could build into the skies.
You could build as tall as you wanted,
But only on a portion of the land.
Narrator: Due to tiered skyscrapers, art deco style buildings
Began to rise in popularity.
The barclay-vesey telephone building was credited
With being the first skyscraper to use zoning resolution
To its designing advantage.
In doing so, the barclay was also the first group
Of architects and engineers to incorporate art deco motifs
Into the building's ornamentation.
Art deco flourishes were used to accentuate
The building's dimensions, adding to the aesthetic
That would become a hallmark of the setback style.
The decade infamously dubbed the roaring '20s
Was a period of economic prosperity
With a distinctive cultural edge.
Anyone in the real estate game was taken along for the ride.
Barr: And so by the early mid-1920s,
The business climate is improving
And there's this tremendous real estate shortage --
Both for housing and for offices.
And so the real estate community in new york city,
For example, really turned to a project of massive building.
Narrator: A quarter of the financial district in new york
Was rebuilt,
Adding over 16 million square feet of office space
Into the mix.
The situation in chicago was no different.
Commercial properties were in short supply,
And rents had gone through the roof.
City planners lifted existing height restrictions,
Allowing chicago to rejoin the race to build to the sky.
Once again, the city was caught in
What historian merrill schleier called "skyscraper mania."
Zukowsky: You know, these things are immortalized
In so many tourists' snapshots all around the world.
Trinkets that someone's selling, t-shirts,
All of these things -- and those are great.
And people get excited about them,
And I think they always will.
Narrator: Skyscraper mania reached its peak
When design proposals for the chicago tribune tower
Were made into a competition.
The owner of the chicago tribune,
Colonel robert mccormick,
Wanted something that would be a tribute to him --
Something grandiose.
And so he had this competition for a design of the building.
Narrator: The prize money offered was $100,000.
Today, that's nearly $1.5 million.
Hundreds of architects submitted designs,
Hoping to make a name for themselves.
Zukowsky: Some were whimsical. Some were farcical.
And some of those done by european modernists
Harkened back to the first chicago school,
Being minimalist, no ornament at all --
Which is not really what american architects
Were doing in the 1920s.
Narrator: Ultimately, two new york-based architects won --
Raymond hood and john mead howells.
Hood & howells' gothic revival design
Appealed to mccormick's traditional values,
The substantial space it enveloped,
Its commercial acumen.
Famous quotations from benjamin franklin
And thomas jefferson line the lobby walls
While the facade was adorned with fragments of stone
Collected by tribune reporters
From significant sites around the world.
Zukowsky: The story goes that he had his stringers in different cities,
As part of their job, send him these bits and pieces early on
To embed in the lower levels,
To prove that he's got connections everywhere.
Narrator: To say the roaring '20s were socially notorious in america
Is nothing short of an understatement.
A new culture was emerging in the country,
Centered in downtown new york.
New york became entertainment central.
It was an exciting time to be living
And working in new york city.
And corporations were tripping over themselves
For a prestigious address.
In the late 1920s, the woolworth building was still
The tallest on manhattan's skyline,
Inciting two other giants of industry into action --
Car magnate walter chrysler
And wall street hotshot george ohrstrom.
Spurred on by their equally competitive architects,
Each party sought to outdo the other,
Aspiring to exceed the woolworth building
And the world's tallest structure --
The renowned eiffel tower in paris.
Walter chrysler saw the chrysler building
As part of a pet project,
Part of a way to express his wealth
And his business acumen, if you will.
Narrator: Walter chrysler proudly referred to his building
As "a monument to me."
The 77-floor tower reflected both the status of its owner
And the very essence of new york.
But this era of limitless possibility wouldn't last.
Narrator: New york's metropolitan population
Exceeded 10 million by the early 1930s.
In an era characterized by social and technological change,
Consumer goods such as the automobile
Became icons of the american dream.
♪
In the early 20th century,
William van alen met his architect partner,
H. Craig severance.
Both had a lot in common in regards to architectural design,
Which included new styles that leaned towards modernism.
By the late 1920s, van alen was contracted to work
On one of the tallest buildings in the world --
The chrysler building.
His design proposal epitomized art deco style.
It was bold and undeniably beautiful.
Its friezes looked like hubcaps,
And the stainless steel gargoyles
The eagle-headed hood ornaments on the 1929 chrysler plymouth.
The proposed completion height of the chrysler building
Was a carefully guarded secret,
Changing constantly during construction,
Forcing ohrstrom's architect, craig severance,
To pile floor after floor onto his building
Just to stay in the race.
Marfella: It was transition towards the big gesture
That becomes the symbol of the building.
It's dominating the skyline.
It's the beginning of a super tall culture.
Zukowsky: It's the first to top the eiffel tower in height,
The first building to exceed 1,000 feet in height.
So this is amazing.
Reporter #3: The tremendous crowds which you see gathered
Outside the stock exchange are due to the greatest crash
In the history of the new york stock exchange in market prices.
You have the roaring '20s,
Barr: And there is a sense of euphoria.
And there's a sense of the kind of limitless possibility,
But then the stock market crashes.
And people in new york,
They're not quite sure what's gonna happen.
There's this kind of wait-and-see attitude
Because they've experienced recessions before.
They've experienced downturns before.
By the end of 1929,
The office vacancy rates around wall street
Were practically zero.
Narrator: Real estate speculators had invested
Heavily in skyscrapers during the roaring '20s.
When the stock market crashed,
There were literally dozens of major buildings
Underway in new york.
So there was little choice but to complete them.
Eleven months after the chrysler building was completed,
It was outshined by the eighth wonder of the modern world --
The empire state building.
Designed by william f. Lamb,
It was commissioned by empire state incorporated,
A group of wealthy investors that included john jacob raskob,
Vice president of general motors.
Howeler: One of the builders of the empire state building said,
"building a skyscraper is the closest peacetime
Equivalent to war,"
Which is a pretty powerful statement.
What he meant was that all efforts, all materials,
All goods and flows, labor,
Are sort of focused on one objective
Which is to build this building.
You could imagine, the road were shut down.
Trucks were bringing in material.
Everything was sort of focused on this "war effort."
Reporter #4: There she is -- the empire state building, 102 stories high.
♪
Narrator: The 223-foot mooring mast on the empire state
Was a late edition to the building,
Easily making it the tallest building in the world --
A position it held right up until 1972.
It was the first skyscraper to exceed 100 stories,
A truly monumental structure
That took up an entire city block.
Howeler: The empire state building was built
During the great depression.
And so, how is that possible?
If you think about it, we could not build a building
Like that today.
And that has sort of been burned into our
Collective imagination --
What a city is, and what new york is.
♪
Narrator: The wall street crash of 1929 led to the great depression,
And inevitably brought the tall-building boom
In new york to an end.
The situation was similar in chicago.
Adding insult to injury, developers took a wrecking ball
To the hallowed home insurance building.
Le baron jenney's vision for the longevity
Of the uniquely chicago-style school
Building was crushed along with the rubble.
His dream for future generations was that they would be able
To read the feelings and aspirations
Of those cutting edge architects and engineers who erected them.
One skyscraper alone is not very interesting.
But the minute you see an assemblage of skyscrapers
They start to make a place from a distance that you can identify
Because they, together, represent this massive humanity
That has somehow managed to live in such close proximity
So successfully for such a long period of time.
A skyscraper is the most public piece of architecture.
They're public in the sense that the public feels
A connection to the skyline in a way that they don't feel
A connection to, say, the single-family house.
But the idea of a skyline is that that's my skyline.
That's a kind of really powerful idea.