Lower Manhattan, Aerial View

Original title: Skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan. Copyright 1910 by Richard W. Rummell (1848-1924). Published by Moses King, Inc. in the King's Color-graphs of New York City. Note: it inaccurately depicts a mixed cityscape between 1910 and late 1911, when the Municipal Building had topped out. It began to be occupied in 1913 and completed in 1914.

Text on print: "view of business centre of the world, from New York Life Insurance Building at 346 Broadway to the Battery, showing the Hudson and East River, with the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, and the business section of Brooklyn, from the East River to Prospect Park and the Institute of Arts and Science, and in the distance Jamaica Bay, which is to be a great supplemental harbor, 41 square miles in extent, with 150 miles of piers. Along Broadway and Wall Street, and in other downtown streets are the greatest steel and granite skyscrapers in the world, from 12 to 47 stories in height, 30 of them over 20 stories, costing from one to sixteen million each, all of them built since 1889, weighing from 30,000 to 200,000 tons each, providing working space for an office population of 500,000, visited daily by 1,000,000 people, 15,000 telephone calls a minute, 8,000 pieces of mail. In these buildings, on the most valuable land in the world, are the headquarters of the greatest financial institutions, railroads, steamship lines, manufacturing concerns, mercantile companies and other enterprises representing an investment of $250,000,000,000".

Aerial view of Lower Manhattan. Hudson River is in the foreground. The Battery and Bowling Green are in left.

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