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The Singer Building or Singer Tower, at Liberty Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan's Financial District, was a 47-story office building completed in 1908 as the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was the tallest building in the world from 1908 to 1909. It was demolished in 1968, together with the adjacent City Investing Building, and is now the site of 1 Liberty Plaza. When it was demolished, it was the tallest building ever to be demolished, and is still the third-tallest building ever to be destroyed (after the World Trade Center towers) and the tallest to be purposely demolished by its owner. ==Construction and early history== The building was commissioned by Frederick Bourne, the head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He hired architect Ernest Flagg, who was an early exponent of the Beaux-Arts architectural style. Flagg had also designed the company's previous headquarters at 561 Broadway between Prince and Spring Streets – in what is now the SoHo neighborhood – which was referred to as the "Little Singer Building" after the new building was erected.〔, p.100〕 Plans and working drawings were prepared by George W. Conable (1866–1933). Flagg believed that buildings more than 10 or 15 stories high should be set back from the street, with the tower occupying only a quarter of the lot.〔 The 12-story base of the building filled an entire blockfront, while the tower above was relatively narrow. The tower floors were squares only 65 feet (20 m) on a side. ''New York Times'' architectural critic Christopher Gray wrote in 2005: The lobby had the quality of "celestial radiance" seen in world's-fair and exposition architecture of the period, as the author Mardges Bacon described it in her 1986 monograph "Ernest Flagg" (Architectural History Foundation, MIT Press). A forest of marble columns rose high to a series of multiple small domes of delicate plasterwork, and Flagg trimmed the columns with bronze beading. A series of large bronze medallions placed at the top of the columns were alternately rendered in the monogram of the Singer company and, quite inventively, as a huge needle, thread and bobbin.〔 At tall, the Singer Building was the tallest office building in the world from its completion in 1908 until the completion in 1909 of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower at 23rd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan.〔 Prior to the Singer Building, however, the 29-story, tall Park Row Building, completed in 1899, was the tallest building in New York City, and briefly held the title of "Tallest Office Building in the World" until being surpassed in 1901 by the Philadelphia City Hall, at tall including the statue. Skyscraper zoning legislation, enacted in 1916 at Flagg's urging, incorporated many of his ideas for setbacks in tall buildings.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Singer Building」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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