"We are convinced that the age of skyscrapers is at an end. It must now be considered an experimental building typology that has failed...continue."

--James Howard Kunstler and Nikos A. Salingaros. The End of Tall Buildings, Planetizen, September 17, 2001.

In a letter to Benito Mussolini in October 1924, Cass Gilbert, designer of the Woolworth's building, discourages him from building a skyscraper in Rome

"If then a tower 1100 feet high should be erected in Rome, a great and glorious thing as it might be itself, it would inevitable be detrimental to the city from an aesthetic point of view. It is well that we preserve our respect for the great ancients. And it is not fitting that we should attempt to outstrip them merely because we have the mechanical means now at hand...continue." --- Cass Gilbert Collection of the New York Historical Society

Almost 80 years after Cass Gilbert wrote this letter, we can see that Rome has preserved its historic buildings and retained a human scale. New York City, on the other hand, has allowed many historic sites, such as Trinity Church, to be lost among tall buildings.

 Recent View of Rome, Italy

The financial district used to have one of the best hardware stores in New York, but a few years ago it could no longer make ends meet and closed. It had one of the finest, largest and longest established food specialty stores in the city; it too has recently closed down. Once upon a time it had a few movies but they became sleeping places for the leisured indigent and eventually disappeared. The district's cultural opportunities are nil. Outside the big offices that form the breathtaking skyline of lower Manhattan is a ring of stagnation, decay, vacancies and vestigial industries."

--Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961.

"U.S. cities have been destroying their sun and light at an accelerating clip. But none has been doing it on such a massive scale, with more technical mastery, and with such a sophisticated set of urban design tools as New York City."

--William H. Whyte,  Rediscovering the Center City 1988