The 20th century architecture of New York City includes numerous icons of architecture, most notably its striking skyscrapers.

A worker helps raise the Empire State Building 25 floors higher than the Chrysler Building (seen to the right), completed just one year before, 1930.

At the beginning of the century, the city was a center for the Beaux-Arts movement, with architects like Stanford White and Carrere and Hastings. New York's skyscrapers include the Flatiron Building (1902) where Fifth Avenue crosses Broadway at Madison Square, Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building (1913) a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking City Hall, the Chrysler Building (1929) the purest expression of the Art Deco skyscraper and the Empire State Building (1931) are all skyscraper icons.

Modernist architect Raymond Hood and after World War II Lever House began the clusters of 'glass boxes' that transformed the more classic previous skyline of the 1930s.

When the World Trade Center towers were completed in 1973 many felt them to be sterile monstrosities, but most New Yorkers became fond of "The Twin Towers" and after the initial horror for the loss of life in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks there came great sadness for the loss of the buildings.

See also

• History of New York City