120 Broadway @ Cedar Street
Architect: Ernest Graham
Date Constructed: 1915

This 40–story building is 538 feet tall, considered a stunning height when it was built in 1915. Although the top floors are actually two rectangular towers next to each other, the overall shape of the building is a giant block that looms over the streets and casts a seven–acre shadow over Downtown. There was tremendous public outcry over this usurpation of sunlight, and it led to the nation’s first zoning law in 1916, which mandated that towers could be built over only one–quarter of the building’s site, thus leaving room for sunlight to get to the street.