Woolworth Building

The Woolworth Building is a landmark skyscraper on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, facing City Hall Park. Completed in 1913 and designed by the architect Cass Gilbert for the retail magnate Frank W. Woolworth, it rises 792 feet and was the tallest building in the world for nearly two decades, until the Chrysler Building surpassed it in 1930.

Architecturally, it is the finest example of the Gothic Revival skyscraper, earning the nickname "the Cathedral of Commerce." Gilbert clad the steel frame in cream terracotta and dressed it with flying buttresses, pinnacles, gargoyles, and tracery borrowed from medieval European churches, translating ecclesiastical grandeur to the language of corporate ambition. Woolworth famously paid the entire construction cost, reported at over 13 million dollars, in cash.

Its interior lobby is among the most opulent in the city, a vaulted, cruciform hall lined with marble, mosaic ceilings, and bronze fittings, decorated with playful carved caricatures, including one of Woolworth counting coins and another of Gilbert cradling a model of the tower. The building's early years drew crowds to an observation deck long since closed to the general public. For the opening in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in Washington that lit the entire tower at once, a widely reported spectacle celebrating the new age of electricity.

For visitors, the Woolworth remains a working office building and is not freely open, but the ornate lobby can be seen on scheduled guided tours led by architectural historians, which must be reserved in advance. The exterior is best admired from City Hall Park or from across Broadway, where the vertical Gothic sweep and the glazed terracotta catch the light. It sits at the center of the Civic Center district, minutes from the Brooklyn Bridge and the World Trade Center, and is reached by numerous subway lines.