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1904. "Produce Exchange, New York, N.Y." George Post's commodity exchange on Broadway, completed in 1884 and the subject of an article in yesterday's New York Times. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co. View full size.
The Produce Building was demolished in 1957 and replaced with a 32-story glass & steel building.
This building has entered into the interminable debate about the World's First Skyscraper. The architect, George B. Post, included a very early example of skeleton frame construction in this building - but not where you would expect to find it. The exterior walls were all load-bearing brick; it was the "window walls" of the interior light court that sat in the center of the top four floors (above the gigantic trading room that occupied the entire footprint of the building at the second floor) which were framed in iron with a lightweight curtain wall over them. This anticipated by one year the earliest example of skeleton framing in Chicago, the Home Insurance Building of 1884-1885. Because this newfangled construction technique was not used to construct the street facades, most historians of skyscrapers do not count it.
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