Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The lobster shift returned home from a long night of pouring drinks, driving taxis, scrubbing floors, or walking the beat on the mad city streets..." (more)
Key Phrases: skyscraper race, pyramid crown, riveting gangs, Van Alen, New York, Empire State (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 1920s "race" to build the world's tallest building has been extensively chronicled. A former literary agent and former St. Martin's editor, Bascomb centers his narrative on two architects, William Van Alen and Craig Severance, who schemed to outdo each other in the race to pierce New York City's skies with, respectively, the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building on East 42nd Street-only to be beaten by a third team hired to construct the Empire State Building (at Fifth Avenue and 34th). While this story is most often told as a sentimental paean to "progress" rather than a bitter corporate feud, Bascomb gives his tale a fresh sense of capitalist drama in his evocation of the nascent worlds of skyscraper engineering, architecture and construction-and real estate speculation with returns projected at 10%. He imbues the former three with some terrific detail (including a 22-item list of how many trades, including mail chute installers and asbestos insulators, it took to build a skyscraper) that gives context to the players and incidental characters, including the five Starrett brothers (builders raised in Lawrence, Kans., who built 40 Wall Street), General Motors' financier John Jacob Raskob (the man behind the ESB), Walter Chrysler, New Yorker reviewer "T-Square," former governor Al Smith and many others. The occasionally intrusive cliches (the Starrett brothers "had building in their blood"), hyperbole (the '20s were "a decade gone mad") and familiar generalizations (the U.S. "finally came into its own" in that same decade) are excusable in a debut book, especially one chronicling an obsession with height and speed.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Though the desire to spike the landscape with ever-higher structures dates back millennia, skyscraper one-upmanship accelerated in the twentieth century. And while it continues today, never was the race so neck-and-neck as at the end of the Roaring Twenties in New York. Architect William Van Alen, commissioned by Walter Chrysler, found himself in direct competition with partner-turned-rival Craig Severance, architect for the Manhattan Company Building (now the Trump Building). Though the Chrysler was begun first, the Manhattan moved faster, and both groups soon were secretly revising plans--with construction underway. With its cloud-piercing spire, the Chrysler won the height race (although the Manhattan claimed the highest usable floor). The real winner was a late entrant: the Empire State Building. Bascomb's book is nicely rounded, exploring the finances and logistics of skyscraper building, from acquiring the land to riveting the steel; the benefits and drawbacks of height; and the personalities of the builders--all as he ratchets up the tension of the race. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (October 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385506600
• ISBN-13: 978-0385506601
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #206,896 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written and a fascinating story, October 27, 2003

By	readsalot2 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I came across this book over the weekend and picked it up for my dad's birthday. I started reading through it on the subway on the way home from the bookstore and could not put it down! I should admit that I don't normally read these kinds of books, but Bascomb does an amazing job of drawing you in with colorful descriptions of the times and characters involved in this truly incredible story of the skyscraper races during the 1920s. Yes, there was literally a race to be the tallest building in the world -- complete with a photo finish just in time for the stock market to crash! If you have any interest in New York, history, engineering, architecture, or just love a great story -- check it out. One of the best things I've picked up in a long time.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "They seem to be springing up like asparagus tips...", November 21, 2003

By	Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

About a month ago I read "Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center" by Daniel Okrent. If you are like me and can't get enough of NYC history, Neal Bascomb's "Higher" makes a wonderful companion piece. The subject is similar (massive construction projects), as is the timeframe (1920's-1930's). Mr. Bascomb's book goes into detail concerning the construction of 3 skyscrapers - the Chrysler Building, the Manhattan Company Building, and the Empire State Building. Mr. Bascomb's book works on several levels: as a straight narrative detailing the complexities of putting up super-large buildings; as a collection of mini-biographies of people integral to the story -including Walter Chrysler, and the architects William Van Alen and Craig Severance (former partners who had had a falling out); and as a cultural/social history of NYC as the Roaring Twenties end and the Great Depression begins. The author drives home the point that form and function follow personality and willpower. The beauty of the Chrysler Building is that it is not just another skyscraper. It reflects the vision of William Van Alen (and Walter Chrysler, who took an active interest in the project - looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of Van Alen's drawings and giving his input). Similarly, a man by the name of John Jakob Raskob ( with ties to General Motors, interestingly enough), by sheer force of will, managed to get the financiers to pony-up the money to put-up the Empire State Building even though the Depression had hit. Another "big theme" is that ego can sometimes overcome cool and calculated financial considerations. When Van Alen and Severance (Manhattan Company Building) realized they were in a "shooting for the stars-war" to build the tallest building, they did some things that made the number-crunchers quiver - adding on extra stories (which increases the need for elevator banks, services, etc. and decreases the percentage of rentable space) or adding on geegaws like the spire of the Chrysler Building, with its totally non-rentable area. Likewise, Raskob soldiered on with the Empire State Building even though many people told him he wouldn't be able to rent all that space during a financial downturn. (They were right. It opened with a 23% occupancy rate and was called the "Empty State Building." It didn't turn a profit until 1948.) The public relations war surrounding the 3 buildings provides an entertaining thread that runs throughout the book - when Severance realized that the spire of the Chrysler Building made it tallest, he countered with the argument that you should only count rentable space - which made the Manhattan Company Building higher. (The public didn't buy it. Taller is taller.) When Chrysler's people realized that within a year or so the Empire State Building would become a reality and would be the new number one, they went into "physical denial." They advertised their building as the biggest and the brightest, and pretended that rapidly growing structure on 34th street didn't exist. Sadly, Walter Chrysler didn't know, from an aesthetic standpoint, what he had. Once the Empire State Building was built, Chrysler lost interest in his own building. In his autobiography he only devoted 2 pages to the topic, and he nowhere mentioned Van Alen by name. He called him "the architect." Mr. Bascomb doesn't let the architectural critics of the time off the hook. Most critics yawned at the Chrysler Building - they didn't think much of it, and thought the spire was a useless frill. Poor Van Alen never got another major commission and had to hustle around trying to get minor building jobs from friends and relatives. Another fascinating part of this book is when Mr. Bascomb goes into detail concerning the actual construction process - how many workers were needed for the various projects, the types and amounts of materials, etc. The Empire State Building, whose construction was organized like clockwork by the Starrett brothers, was put-up at the incredible rate of 4 1/2 floors per week. 500 trucks a day delivered materials to the building site, and the steel beams being put into place had been manufactured at the Pennsylvania mills a mere 3 days before. (The beams were still warm when they got to 34th street.) Despite the speed of construction, safety was emphasized. 6 men died (their names are given, by the way) during construction of the Empire State Building, which was amazingly few considering the scale of the project. Finally, the book has 8 pages of interesting black-and-white photos of the time, including one of the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White perched atop the eagle gargoyle on the Chrysler Building, getting ready to snap a shot. If you suffer from vertigo you may want to skip that photo, as well as the one of the photographer Jack Reilly hanging from the 72nd story steelwork of the Manhattan Company Building.....

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A love letter to New York, the greatest city in the world, June 16, 2004

By	Daniel Friedman "dfja17" (Harrison, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Although it's focus is specifically on the construction of three major buildings of the New York skyline, Higher is deep down a very fond remembrance of a time when fortunes were literally falling and yet the city of New York grew exponentially toward becoming the epitome of the modern metropolis.

Neal Bascomb meticulously chronicles the events and characters who were responsible for this fertile period, but in doing so he very successfully manages to avoid bogging down in details and figures that might hinder a similarly-themed and more scholarly approach. This isn't to say that Bascomb didn't do his homework, but that he has been able to make a comprehensive narrative that's riveting (excuse the pun) and fast-paced. Indeed, the buildings themselves were all constructed with remarkable speed considering the scope of the projects and the technology of the day.

It was a great pleasure to not only follow along in what was a true rat race for the tallest building but to also gain significant insight into what is my personal favorite of the skyline, the Chrysler Building - a structure that has lived all but one year of it's life in the shadow of the Empire State.