Title: Lower Manhattan 1930
Subtitle: The Financial District and Waterfront
Text: Skylines grow in spurts, and the moment before Wall Street erupted with several more fifty- to seventy-story pinnacle towers is captured in this 1930 photograph. The tallest spire is 40 Wall Street, which topped out at 927 feet in the fall of 1929, finishing second in a famous race with the Chrysler Building to become the world's tallest. Before this, the 1913 Woolworth Building, at the left of this image, was the record-holder at 792-feet.
On the waterfront, ferry slips mix with piersheds with their ships and lighters lined with rail cars. The low-rise area at the left is the future site of the World Trade Center. In the 1930s, the authors of the WPA Guide to New York City called this stretch of the Hudson "the most lucrative waterfront property in the world."
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