I'm trying to find out what was the first reinforced-concrete skyscraper in NYC and if it is still standing. If not, then what is the oldest that is still around? Thanks.

• ID# 262.2 (reply to #262.1) - 14 September 2005
  A darn good question indeed. Well, at least the world's first seriously tall concrete-framed building was the Ingalls Building in Cincinnati in 1902 (ENR). A snippet from an article by Concrete Construction about the origins of the two days per floor construction schedule:

  "The two-day cycle
  In 1950, Joseph DePaola, DIC Concrete, N.Y., discovered an on-hold building project on 60th Street in Manhattan. The building had been designed for structural steel, but steel was unavailable. He asked the owners if they would consider building it with structural reinforced concrete, assuring them that he could start immediately and beat the timetable originally planned for steel. They gave him the opportunity. Farkas & Baron Consulting Engineers, N.Y., reengineered the building for concrete, and DIC Concrete embarked on a schedule of constructing one floor every two days for the 15-story building. It worked and DePaola went on to use this method on many other projects."

  The Sheraton Centre of 1962 is the farthest I've reached in concrete-framed buildings, being at the same time the tallest NYC building with a concrete frame.
  For background: Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers: from Ingalls to Jin mao
  (Concentrating on Chicago developments, hmmm.) ED

• ID# 262.3 (reply to #262.1)
  From: Donald Friedman - 6 December 2005

  As always, it depends on your definition of "skyscraper." One candidate could be a little-known loft building, the Monolith, on 34th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. It's 11 or 12 stories, fairly slender, and was built between 1905 and 1910.
  Obviously, this is not a skyscraper in the traditional sense, but given how few concrete buildings there were in NYC at that time, I think it should be considered.
  Also, I believe a number of 10- to 12- story warehouses and factories were built between 1910 and 1915, but they were much stockier and therefore less "skyscraperish."