^ Some really great old pubs in that first link, Dianne! Very nice photos. Thanks.
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The beautiful Singer Tower in New York was built in 1908, and was, for one year, the tallest building in the world. I think with today's eyes we can see immediately that it's too high or too ornate, and indeed that was its undoing: all that complex masonary so high up (600 plus feet) became too dangerous/expensive to maintain. In 1967 it was demolished,; a process in itself that was very tricky and took two years, just because NewYorkers didn't want elephant-sized bits of masonry falling onto the traffic in the surrounding streets.
One thing to notice: if you cover the bottom two-thirds of the first picture with your hand, you are looking at something that could be a street scene in an old European town, and that's what the Singer Tower illustrates; how early skyscapers took their aesthetics from the old world and created some weird hybrids before the "glass box" style won out, because of its practical and economic advantages.
Also, to get an idea of scale: best seen in the middle photo, the bit on top, above the grey sloping roof and surrounded by a square white parapet, is, in itself, the height of a four-storey building!