Ten Tallest Buildings in 1900 in NYC

The original Standard Oil Building was only ten stories tall, but in 1895, Kimball & Thompson added six new skeleton frame floors and a north extension to the building, making it 280 feet tall. - The Skyscraper Museum

Notable for its ingenuity in engineering, this building was one of the first to use pneumatic caissons for its foundations. Designed by architects Kimball and Thompson and engineer Charles Sooysmith, it reached a height of 348 ft.^[1] Built on a site with a 54-foot layer of mud and quicksand, the Manhattan Life Insurance Building required its masonry foundations to be carried down to bedrock. Initial excavation was carried out by men and horses scraping across the entire lot, after which caissons were installed allowing men to continue digging beneath the masonry piers that slowly sank to the bedrock.^[2]… the Manhattan Life Building became NYC’s tallest skyscraper in 1893. It was also the first office building to use pneumatic caissons in its foundation.^[3]