Largest Office Building

All along this country has held the heavyweight championship in office buildings. Manhattan at first took the lead with the historic Mills building (soon to be torn down) and kept it with the subsequent erection of other skyscrapers, including the Woolworth and Equitable Buildings. The latter is at present Manhattan's most spacious office structure. It contains 1,236,000 square feet of office space.

The skyscraper had no sooner become a symbol for business progress and growth, than the Middle West entered the competition. W. C. Durant, then heading General Motors, decided to acquire the championship in office buildings for Detroit, and succeeded in doing , so with the enormous General Motors Building--at present the world's largest. Cleveland also entered the competition with its mammoth Union Trust building. Chicago began planning new office structures of huge size. Thus, while Manhattan remained unique in the number of its skyscrapers, its largest building was outranked by construction in the Middle West.

Recently, however, Manhattan has re-entered the competition. A building syndicate has acquired the block hounded by Lexington Ave., Depew Place, 43rd and 44th Sts., adjacent to the Grand Central Station. On this site will be erected a building rising 30 stories above the street level, and extending seven stories beneath it; it will he completed Mar. 1,1927. The new structure will be the largest office building in the world, since it will contain 21,000,000 cubic feet and have 1,350,000 square feet of office space--30,000 more than the General Motors Building, and 114,000 more than the Equitable. The new building will cost approximately $19,000,000.