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In 1930, 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building were both under construction, in a race to become the world's tallest building. As the two topped out, 40 Wall Street seemed just a bit higher, and its builders believed they'd won.
Unbeknownst to them, however, a spire was under construction, hidden inside the Chrysler Building's elevator shaft. When the building was completed, the spire was simply slid upward -- making the Chrysler Building the world's tallest in minutes.
The fight to build the world's tallest building has long since been won by Chicago's Sears Tower, and the World Trade Center will be New York's tallest for the foreseeable future: It's unlikely any developer will get permission to build that high again.
But Manhattan builders are still fighting hard to put their thumbprint on the city's skyline. Consider Citicorp Center's slanted top, the AT&T Building's "Chippendale"-style roof or the pyramid atop the new Park Avenue Tower, illuminated at night.
"These days, very few Fifties- or Sixties-style boxy glass structures are being built," says Michael T. Cohen, senior vice president of Williams Real Estate Co. "People are using better architects to make a statement with a signature building. Each one looks like it wants to break the mold."
Financial companies are behind a great deal of this mold-breaking. Of the 12 buildings built in the past 10 years that Crain's New York Business identified as changing the Manhattan skyline most, seven house a financial company as a principal tenant, and three were built with specific ones in mind.
Not surprising, some experts say: Finance is the city's biggest industry -- and its most lucrative. As one observer put it, "Whoever's doing well can afford splashy buildings."
But others believe financial companies have a particular interest in edifices that project their chosen corporate image. "Fifty years ago, banks were built of granite and marble with imposing fronts to give depositors a feeling of security," notes Charles J. Urstadt, chairman of the Manhattan real estate firm Pearce, Urstadt, Mayer & Greer. "Now that's changed, and they're trying to come up with landmark-type buildings."
William Shore, senior vice president of the Manhattan-based Regional Plan Association, says, "Deregulation, and the need to compete more intensely, are probably part of the...