Broadway and City Hall Park NYC

Original title: Broadway from Chambers St., New York, N.Y. copyrighted 1908 by Detroit Publishing Company. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Amazing view taken from a building in Chambers Street, showing some of the early skyscrapers in Manhattan. The Post Office Building, completed in 1880 on the southern end of City Hall Park, was demolished in 1939. The Park Row Building, located between Beekman and Ann streets, completed in 1899 with 29 floors high, was the tallest building in Manhattan at the end of the 19th century.

The 47-story Singer Building, seen in the distance, was the tallest building in the world from 1908 to 1909, when it was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower in New York. The Saint Paul Building, completed in 1898, was named after historic St. Paul's Chapel. The buildings on the right, between Murray Street and Warren Street, are the Home Life Insurance Company, the Postal Telegraph Company, both constructed between 1892 and 1894, and the Roger Peet building, a New York City landmark, erected in 1899, site of the old Mason's Arms Tavern in the 18th century.