Bankers Trust Company Building (originally 14 Wall Street)

Abstract

THE PERVADING metaphor for the skyscraper in the eclectic era was monumentality. As a powerful but young nation, America felt a need to compete with the landmarks of history. If not in age, we could outdo the past in sheer size and height: The Met Life Tower was twice as big as the original in Venice; the Woolworth outdid London’s Houses of Parliament and the cathedrals of Europe as the world’s tallest building. Trowbridge & Livingston turned to one of the best known images from antiquity—the pyramidal Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (C. 352 B.C.)—to cap off their 37-story skyscraper at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets. At 539 feet tall, but with fronts measuring only 94 by 97 feet, it was considered the world’s tallest structure on so small a site.