American early skyscraper, also known as Singer Tower, a 47-story office building constructed at Liberty Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District, as the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company.
At 186.57 m (612.1 ft) tall, the Singer Building was the tallest office building in the world from its completion in 1908 until the completion in 1909 of the 210 m (700-ft) Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower at 23rd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Prior to the Singer Building, however, the 29-storey, 119 m (391 ft) Park Row Building, completed in 1899, was the tallest building in New York City, and briefly held the title of “Tallest Office Building in the World” until being surpassed in 1901 by the Philadelphia City Hall, at 167 m (548 ft) tall including the statue.
The Singer Tower was the first skyscraper to rise above the 161.5 m (530 ft) steeple of the Ulm Minster, a Lutheran church completed on 31 May 1890 in Ulm, Germany. Multiple tall buildings taller than Ulm Minster were completed in 1901 (for eaxample, the Philadelphia City Hall and 167.5 m (550 ft) Mole Antonelliana). However none of these was a skyscraper by most definitions, as they were supported, like other pre-skyscraper tall buildings, by thick outer walls.
The building was commissioned by Frederick Bourne, the head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He hired architect Ernest Flagg, who was an early exponent of the Beaux-Arts architectural style.
It was demolished in 1968, together with the adjacent City Investing Building, and is now the site of 1 Liberty Plaza. When it was demolished, it was the tallest building ever to be demolished, and is still the third-tallest building ever to be destroyed (after the World Trade Center towers) and the tallest to be purposely demolished by its owner.
Link to Wikipedia biography