The skyscraper could only be born in America

Ground will be broken for Two World Trade Center on July 9.It’s appropriate that the final tower at the site once called “Ground Zero” is to be the new headquarters of the American Express Company.

America, after all, is where skyscrapers were invented.And although the iconic New York City cloudbusters, built mostly between the 1930s and 1950s, are no longer the world’s tallest, they remain the most beautiful, the most expressive of their times — and forever symbolic of Yankee Doodle aspiration and faith.The earliest skyscrapers popped up in Chicago in the late 1800s, but Manhattan soon overtook that city, and our collection reigns supreme.They fire the imaginations of our friends and enemies alike. A photo of Liverpool-born George Harrison, shot in 1963 when the Beatles weren’t yet a global phenomenon, captures him gazing in wonder at Lower Manhattan from Liberty Island.Even the captain of Nazi Germany’s U-123 that sneaked into New York Harbor in winter 1942 said, after sighting the lit-up spires through a submarine periscope, “I cannot describe the feeling with words.”Height in itself isn’t the only benchmark of a skyscraper. The 22-story Flatiron Building, completed in 1902, is regarded as one for its impressive height for its time, and for the way its triangular form, tapering to a point at its northern end, proclaims a relationship with the sky above and the city around it.Our masterpieces include many from the era of masonry and brick, materials that gave structures a warmer look than modern steel and glass, and lent themselves to romantic ornamentation.They were built for companies like US Steel, the Chrysler Corporation and RCA, and by visionaries such as John D.  Rockefeller and GM mogul John J.

Raskob, the prime mover behind the Empire State Building.The latter went up in a mere 18 months during the depths of the Great Depression — a stirring affirmation of American resilience.As skyscraper historian Carol Willis wrote in h...