New exhibition at The Skyscraper Museum devoted to the invention and evolution of Manhattan’s skyline

In Here is New York, author E.B. White wrote that the city's iconic skyline was “to the nation what the white church spire is to the village — the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying that the way is up.” Home to the Empire State Building, the Art Deco Chrysler Building, and now, the super-tall One World Trade Center, New York's notable horizon has become a civic signature of the city. 

Ever-changing, a new exhibition SKYLINE at The Skyscraper Museum in New York City examines how the city's iconic skyline came to be. Distinguishing five separate periods in which new buildings added took forms based on economic, technological, and regulatory factors, the exhibition traces the overarching story of Manhattan’s high-rise growth from small to tall.

Looking at popular culture items such as early 20th-century postcards, souvenirs, magazines, and movies, as well as architectural models, photographs, and renderings, the exhibition traces the changes in both the conception of and physical form of the city over time. It also includes a series of historical and contemporary panoramic photographs of the lower Manhattan skyline. Taken from the same vantage over more than 100 years, the images are aligned and overlaid so they become markers of the "ascent of the skyline".

SKYLINE is a first in organizing New York’s nearly 150 years of Manhattan’s high-rise development into significant periods of building shapes and urban form. The exhibition will be on display through January 2019, but if you can't make it to New York, you can catch the parallel project online here, which includes all the graphics and texts in the exhibition, as well as the innovative interactive “sliders."