The Cathedral of Commerce

Rising ahead of you in sharp Gothic spires, the Woolworth Building once held a title no other building on the planet could claim. When it opened on April twenty fourth, nineteen thirteen, with President Woodrow Wilson flipping a switch from the White House to light its windows, it stood seven hundred ninety two feet tall and became the tallest building in the world.

Frank Woolworth built his fortune on nickels and dimes, running a chain of five and ten cent stores that eventually spanned the country. He wanted his new headquarters to announce that fortune without apology, and insisted on paying for a large share of construction in cash rather than taking on debt, a point of pride he made sure people knew about. Three years after it opened, a clergyman named Samuel Parkes Cadman nicknamed it the Cathedral of Commerce, struck by how closely its soaring Gothic details and vaulted lobby echoed the great cathedrals of Europe, built instead to glorify a chain of dime stores.

Woolworth leaned into the joke. Inside the lobby, look up at the ornamental brackets carved into the ceiling, and you will find caricatures of the men who built the tower, including its architect and its engineers. Woolworth himself appears among them, carved into stone and counting out nickels and dimes in his hand, a five and dime king literally immortalized doing the thing that made him rich.

The building held its record as the tallest in the world until nineteen thirty, when the Chrysler Building rose nearby and took the title. It never stopped being one of the most recognizable buildings in the city, a monument to a fortune built one nickel at a time.