Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City Book

The 1920s was a decade of great ambition and nonstop exuberance, and no place on earth reflected the spirit of the times more than New York City. The heart of Americaâ??s commercial, financial, and cultural life, New York provided the perfect backdrop for a contest that brought all three into playâ??the construction of three buildings that embodied the aspirations of a powerfully emerging nation: the Chrysler Building, the Manhattan Company Building, and the Empire State Building.At the heart of this race was an intense rivalryâ??a contest between William Van Alen and Craig Severance, two prominent New York architects, to take New York Cityâ??s skyline to literally unprecedented heights. Former friends and partners, Van Alen and Severance had split over artistic and business differences, and then set out to best each other. Severance, backed by old money, drew up plans for the Manhattan Bank Building downtown, a commission that fit well with his own classic tastes. Van Alen, meanwhile, was a creative genius who envisioned a bolder, more contemporary skyscraper. He found his ideal, larger-than-life patron in Walter Chrysler. The ensuing battle commanded daily attentionâ??from breaking ground at the sites to a floor-by-floor race to reach the tallest heightsâ??and involved a fascinating historical cast of characters, including New Yorkâ??s leading politicians at the time, Al Smith and Governor Franklin Roosevelt. In HIGHER, Neal Bascomb brings to life the excitement of the city in the final, heady days before the Great Depression. He creates a tale as suspenseful as the race itselfâ??and as dramatic as an ingenious last-minute flourish that would briefly give one building the title not only of tallest in New York, but tallest in the world, before another monument to America rather than one man, soared even higher.Read More