scraping the sky
Scraping the Sky Upon entering a prominent city one will most likely notice the irregular skyline of buildings, one taller than the next. Skyscrapers are an integral part of modern living. Since the beginning of time people have depended upon their convenience- you can create a lot of real estate out of a relatively small ground area by building from the ground up into the never-ending sky. Also, the very existence of one increases the value of property it was built on. There are so many uses for them: offices, communications towers, retail and living space. One of the most significant skyscrapers of all time is founded in New York City. It is known as the Empire State Building. “The original site had been a farm that was acquired in 1827 by William Backhouse Astor, whose descendants later built the Waldorf (1893) and the Astoria (1897) hotels on the site. The merged Waldorf-Astoria was demolished for the Empire State Building and the hotel moved to its present location on Park Avenue and 50th Street” (Tauranac, 233).