Lecture and tour: Why So High: New York's Collection of "World's Tallest Buildings"

Offered at Pratt Institute Center for Continuing and Professional Studies, Manhattan Campus (click here for more information and then click on “16/SU-PMPD-510-02”), or here for information about the Pratt Center, or here for the catalog listing – scroll half-way down that page).

During the 20th century, the title “world’s tallest building” ranked exclusively as a New York phenomenon until Chicago’s Sears Tower overtopped the World Trade Center. Today, that title has moved off shore, and New York vies merely for “tallest apartment building in the Western Hemisphere.” This course includes a lecture tracing the New York saga through the Trade Center, and considers the unexpected economic rationale of advertising value to the title-holders. We then visit perhaps the most beautiful of the group, the Woolworth Building, and conclude with a look at the newly opened One World Trade Center nearby. (3 AIA/LU’S, .3 C.E.U.’S)

Please Note: The tour of the Woolworth Building will be in the company of Helen Post Curry, great-granddaughter of Cass Gilbert, the Woolworth Building’s architect.

TO REGISTER: There is no direct link, unfortunately. To register, click here to go to the catalog, then click on the “Register Now” box in the upper right-hand corner of that page, enter “PMPD 510 ” in the box labeled “Course Code Number,” and press “Submit” at the bottom of that page. Then on the next page select the date you want, and click “Submit.”