The Woolworth Building

The story everyone knows about the Woolworth Building (1913) is that retailer F.W. Woolworth was so wealthy that he paid the $13.5 million for his building in cash, representing thousands upon thousands of individual sales of dime-store items in his empire of five- and ten-cent stores. In 1910, he told his architect, Cass Gilbert, that he wanted to build a tower that was 50-feet taller than the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, then the tallest structure in New York. (Supposedly Woolworth wanted Cass to also mimic the Gothic lines in England's Houses of Parliament.) At the time of its official unveiling, the building was lit by 80,000 lights which were thrown by a switch flipped by then president Woodrow Wilson. In the basement of its 57-stories there was a huge pool and restaurant, meant to attract high-income tenants. It was the world's tallest structure until 1930, I guess when it was beset by the race between the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.