Quintessentially American.

Perhaps no structure more clearly expressed the optimism, energy, and ambition of the American 1920s than the skyscraper. As cities boomed, so too did the number of gigantic towers, proclaiming through their often startlingly individualistic forms the power and grandeur of American endeavors in general and American business in particular. The 1920s have been called the richest era in skyscraper design, primarily because of the theatrical romanticism of the buildings that appeared during the decade. The glistening white Wrigley Building in Chicago, begun in 1921 by Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White; the massive, curved-base Standard Oil Building, built by Carrere and Hastings on lower Broadway in 1926; and the ornately crowned tower — meant to suggest radio waves — of Cross and Cross's original RCA Building, erected in New York City in the late 1920s: all conveyed the imaginative spirit of the businesses that commissioned, and the...