The title phrase typically refers to how to make money in real estate, but it also matters with respect to architectural effect. The Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world for 18 years but, almost as important, it looks very tall because it faces the open space of City Hall Park. The New York Telephone Building, above, was tall but not exceptionally so when it was completed in 1927, but it looked very tall then. It faces West Street and, then, the Hudson River docks, and the buildings around it were all small and much older.
As time went by, the surrounding buildings were replaced by larger ones, the docks were replaced by landfill and then Battery Park City, and the World Trade Center was built immediately to its south. Next to the huge towers of the World Trade Center (either the original version or the rebuilt version), the New York Telephone Building simply does not seem that big.
But that picture, from around 1930…it’s close to the platonic ideal of a skyscraper.
