The Barclay Vesey Telephone Building was one of the first skyscrapers built on downtown's gritty westside - a working waterfront dominated by piers, warehouses, and small-scale industry.

The entire World Trade Center was more than its signature twin towers; it was designed as a complex of seven buildings on 16-acres comprising a city-sized 10 million square feet of rentable office space. The World Trade Center was built and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 1966 to 1974. The Twin Towers, One and Two World Trade Center, represented the ambition of the bi-state authority and of the confident modernism of the late 1960's that saw bigger as better.

The four major towers of the World Financial Center are the business and commercial center of Battery Park City, a 92-acre swath of landfill built over the closely spaced piers of the working port. Separated from historic downtown by West Street an eight-lane highway, Battery Park City has been developed since the 1970s.

Cass Gilbert, later architect of the Woolworth Building, designed this speculative office tower for developer General Howard Carroll.

Starrett & Van Vleck designed 21 West Street in concert with its neighbor, the Downtown Athletic Club. The two designs contrast strongly in their use of color and textured brick, but set back at the same points and utilize similar materials.

In the booming prosperity of the mid 1920s, the Downtown Athletic Club abandoned its quarters in the Singer Building to establish its own, purpose-built skyscraper.

Once one of the largest office buildings in the city, the Whitehall Building was constructed in two phases. Planning for the larger second structure began immediately after the original 20-story building opened to great success in 1904. The 31-story addition quintupled the building's size.