The Life and Death of The World’s Tallest Building
Lost Masterpieces
It was once the tallest building of the world—but in the late 1960s it was rendered suddenly obsolete, and so New York lost the Singer Building.
Alamy; Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
One of the great ironies of the 20th century is that for all the drama surrounding each grand new building, they all age about as well as that meme about Russian women.
There is perhaps no building more representative of this fate than the once iconic and now non-existent Singer Building.
In fact, when it was destroyed in 1968 (the tallest building ever destroyed until the Twin Towers) The New York Times obituary headline blared: “Daring in ’08, Obscure in ’68.”