Gillender Building

The Gillender Building was an early 20-story skyscraper in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. It stood on the northwest corner of Wall Street and Nassau Street, on a narrow strip of land along Nassau Street measuring only 26 by 73 feet (7.9 m × 22 m). At the time of its completion in 1897, the 273 feet (83 m) tall Gillender Building was, depending on ranking methods, the fourth or the eighth tallest structure in New York.

The Gillender Building was praised as an engineering novelty, and was quoted by some as "one of the wonders of the city". It attracted attention for a visible disproportion of height and footprint which commanded a relatively low rentable area, and was deemed economically obsolete from the start.

After thirteen years of uneventful existence, Gillender Building was sold in December 1909 for a record price of $822 per square foot of land, and was demolished in April–June 1910 to make way for the 41–story Bankers Trust tower at 14 Wall Street. The New York Times called demolition of the Gillender Building the first time when a modern skyscraper was torn down to be replaced with a taller and larger one. It briefly held the title of the tallest building ever demolished voluntarily.

Read more about Gillender Building:  Site, Construction, Sequence of Deconstruction Images, 1910, Takeover, Demolition, In Fiction

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