The Singer Building (New York City)

The Singer Building was designed by Ernest Flagg, a Beaux-Arts architect who had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The building was actually an addition — a slender 27-storey tower — rising from a broader 14-storey base that Flagg had designed for Singer in 1897. The tower's French Second Empire–inspired design, with its mansard roof and ornate terracotta detailing, made it an immediate landmark. It held the title of world's tallest building for only 18 months before being surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower in 1909. By the 1960s, the Singer Building was considered commercially unviable: its tower floors were only 6,800 square feet — too small for modern corporate tenants who demanded open floor plans. Despite protests from preservationists, the building was demolished in 1967–1968 and replaced with the 54-storey One Liberty Plaza (completed 1973), a brutalist black steel box that many architecture critics consider vastly inferior. The Singer Building's demolition galvanised the architectural preservation movement and contributed to the expansion of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission powers. Ironically, Flagg had intended the building to demonstrate that elegant tall buildings could be built on small footprints — a vision of humane density that urbanists now champion.