Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower ca. 1909. New York boasts few campaniles, yet here, the architects arrived at the ingenious scheme of combining skyscraper offices, a commercial symbol ("The Light that Never Fails"), and a large office building into one structure. In 1908 it was the tallest building in New York, and the clock faces are larger than those of Big Ben in London.

New York is a city built on the labor of its people. This story captures a glimpse inside training spaces and workplaces of days past, many of which you'd be hard-pressed to find today.

Explore Lower Midtown. Observe skyscrapers vying for height 🏙️ and glimpse the grandeur of historic hotels, theatres, and public buildings. Join the hustle and bustle of NoMad and wander the quiet, quaint blocks of Gramercy Park🌳.

In the 1880s, the Lyceum Theatre sat here on Fourth Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets. The theatre was eventually acquired by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company as it looked to expand. The theatre owner, Daniel Frohman, moved his theatre to 45th Street and Broadway at a time when that area was only beginning to emerge as the New York City Theatre District. Frohman's new Lyceum opened in November 1903 with a few bricks from the old Lyceum in its cornerstone.

The graceful Metropolitan Life Tower overlooks Madison Square Park. This story is of its beginnings, as adapted from the Skyscraper Museum's "Ten Tops" exhibition.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free They are the words inscribed on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty. For many, these words are proof that welcoming immigrants and refugees are as fundamental to what it means to be American as the idea of “liberty” itself. Learn about how Emma Lazarus came to place them there. This story is abbreviated. View the original here.

New York, the city of great heights. Let's admire some buildings that were at one time the tallest!

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

In 1907, the president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, John Rogers Hegeman, commissioned the firm Napoleon LeBrun and Sons to design a campanile-style tower for the expansion of the company headquarters. Construction began later that same year, and in 1909, the building opened, advertising the company's status as s the largest insurer in the world. With its slender shaft, high-pitched roof and lantern, the tower of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company evokes the famed bell-tower of San Marco in Venice. First planned to be 658 feet, the final height stretched to 700 feet. Sheathed in white Tuckahoe Marble, the tower rises above Madison Square at 23rd Street and Madison Avenue where at night the "light that never fails" glows from its lantern, flashing the hour and quarter-hour. In 1960-61, the tower was subjected to an aggressive remodeling campaign in which most of the classical detail was stripped off, including balconies and a prominent cornice. The marble facade was replaced with sheer limestone panels so the Tower would match the modernized base. Today, the four clock-faces remain the only memory of the ornate facade, though, the proud tower still remains a defining element of the midtown skyline.

Metropolitan Life Tower ca. 1916 Completed in 1909, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower, on the east side of Madison Square at 24th Street, at 657 feet, was the tallest building in the world for four years. The four-faced clock on the tower is 26-1/2 feet in diameter and the dials are two stories high. Before the tower's completion, during the 1908 presidential election, a large searchlight was placed on top of it that displayed the election results for miles around.