Woolworth Building

The Woolworth Building is a Gothic Revival skyscraper at 233 Broadway in lower Manhattan, commissioned by the retail magnate Frank W. Woolworth and designed by the architect Cass Gilbert, completed in 1913. Rising 60 stories and clad in glazed terracotta ornamented with Gothic tracery, gargoyles and pinnacles, it became the tallest building in the world upon completion and held that title until 1930, and its lavish lobby is decorated with Byzantine-style mosaics and caricature sculptures of figures involved in the building's construction. Contemporaries nicknamed it the Cathedral of Commerce for the way its soaring vertical lines and church-like ornament dressed a purely commercial office tower in ecclesiastical form. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.