Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City

About a month ago I read "Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center" by Daniel Okrent. If you are like me and can't get enough of NYC history, Neal Bascomb's "Higher" makes a wonderful companion piece. The subject is similar (massive construction projects), as is the timeframe (1920's-1930's). Mr. Bascomb's book goes into detail concerning the construction of 3 skyscrapers - the Chrysler Building, the Manhattan Company Building, and the Empire State Building. Mr. Bascomb's book works on several levels: as a straight narrative detailing the complexities of putting up super-large buildings; as a collection of mini-biographies of people integral to the story -including Walter Chrysler, and the architects William Van Alen and Craig Severance (former partners who had had a falling out); and as a cultural/social history of NYC as the Roaring Twenties end and the Great Depression begins. The author drives home the point that form and function follow personality and willpower. The beauty of the Chrysler Building is that it is not just another skyscraper. It reflects the vision of William Van Alen (and Walter Chrysler, who took an active interest in the project - looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of Van Alen's drawings and giving his input). Similarly, a man by the name of John Jakob Raskob ( with ties to General Motors, interestingly enough), by sheer force of will, managed to get the financiers to pony-up the money to put-up the Empire State Building even though the Depression had hit. Another "big theme" is that ego can sometimes overcome cool and calculated financial considerations. When Van Alen and Severance (Manhattan Company Building) realized they were in a "shooting for the stars-war" to build the tallest building, they did some things that made the number-crunchers quiver - adding on extra stories (which increases the need for elevator banks, services, etc. and decreases the percentage of rentable space) or adding on geegaws like the spire of the Chrysler Building, with its totally non-rentable area. Likewise, Raskob soldiered on with the Empire State Building even though many people told him he wouldn't be able to rent all that space during a financial downturn. (They were right. It opened with a 23% occupancy rate and was called the "Empty State Building." It didn't turn a profit until 1948.) The public relations war surrounding the 3 buildings provides an entertaining thread that runs throughout the book - when Severance realized that the spire of the Chrysler Building made it tallest, he countered with the argument that you should only count rentable space - which made the Manhattan Company Building higher. (The public didn't buy it. Taller is taller.) When Chrysler's people realized that within a year or so the Empire State Building would become a reality and would be the new number one, they went into "physical denial." They advertised their building as the biggest and the brightest, and pretended that rapidly growing structure on 34th street didn't exist. Sadly, Walter Chrysler didn't know, from an aesthetic standpoint, what he had. Once the Empire State Building was built, Chrysler lost interest in his own building. In his autobiography he only devoted 2 pages to the topic, and he nowhere mentioned Van Alen by name. He called him "the architect." Mr. Bascomb doesn't let the architectural critics of the time off the hook. Most critics yawned at the Chrysler Building - they didn't think much of it, and thought the spire was a useless frill. Poor Van Alen never got another major commission and had to hustle around trying to get minor building jobs from friends and relatives. Another fascinating part of this book is when Mr. Bascomb goes into detail concerning the actual construction process - how many workers were needed for the various projects, the types and amounts of materials, etc. The Empire State Building, whose construction was organized like clockwork by the Starrett brothers, was put-up at the incredible rate of 4 1/2 floors per week. 500 trucks a day delivered materials to the building site, and the steel beams being put into place had been manufactured at the Pennsylvania mills a mere 3 days before. (The beams were still warm when they got to 34th street.) Despite the speed of construction, safety was emphasized. 6 men died (their names are given, by the way) during construction of the Empire State Building, which was amazingly few considering the scale of the project. Finally, the book has 8 pages of interesting black-and-white photos of the time, including one of the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White perched atop the eagle gargoyle on the Chrysler Building, getting ready to snap a shot. If you suffer from vertigo you may want to skip that photo, as well as the one of the photographer Jack Reilly hanging from the 72nd story steelwork of the Manhattan Company Building.....

`Higher' is the story about the race for the `highest building in the world', set in New York City in the late 1920's and early 1930's. It portrays the race between the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building (aka 40 Wall Street, current The Trump Building), and when that is settled and done the Empire State Building moves in to beat them all. The book focuses on the architects and their commissioners, who are often self made man not shy of showing their success (which is in fact an American success) powered by the economic boom at the time. The story shows that these kind of skyscrapers really are the product of ego driven characters and economic acceleration. But there really isn't anything wrong with that for as such they are just a symbol of achievement over a rational product of urbanism.The book is full of quotes and it links the relations between the actors which give the book a lively edge, yet it reads as easily as a novel. There plenty of `gee, I didn't know that' facts and details in it, all adding up to the excitement of the story (for example, the famous Chrysler Building spire was topped out one day before the infamous Wall Street crash). By focussing on a few main characters and the topic of height, the book doesn't dwell in all directions which it could have done so easily for it really is a fascinating story to tell. I wouldn't be surprised if this story will be made into a movie or tv series one day for this story and the way it's being told really deserves that.

A colleague of mine recommended this book to me and I absolutely loved it and have since recommended and lent it to friends. I had previously read Devil in the White City and this felt like a kind of sequel--the Chrysler Building was meant to beat the Eiffel Tower much the same way the Ferris Wheel was at the Chicago World's Fair.Bascomb does an excellent job mixing incredible architectural detail with a fresh narrative. Everything comes in context so you understand why the choice of materials matters, why the pace was so impressive, why the height was so important, and how the competition came to be. It was also a very nostalgic read in some ways--I read the book as the American auto manufacturers were in their bailout phase, and it was a bit odd at times to read about the grandeur and stature of the Chrysler building and then check the day's headlines.The photographs by Margaret Bourke-White in the book were also breathtaking, particularly "the gargoyle shot" (you'll know it when you see it).Incidentally, if you've ever seen the movie Two Weeks Notice, when Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant are taking a helicopter ride over the Manhattan skyline and Grant asks about the two partner architects that turned on each other to compete for the highest skyscraper in New York...that's this story.

Fascinating and very readable account (though, sadly, not indexed, and thus only four stars) of the 1929-30 race to build three skyscrapers in New York on the eve of the Depression . . . the "race" being to complete the tallest building. All three (Empire State, Chrysler, and a shorter building in the financial district) were winners though only the Empire State was lastingly so for some four decades. Key people--architects and engineers mostly--are at the center of the tale. The book is especially timely given the current-day race to build dozens of tall (and skinny) buildings in Manhattan.

Excellent!