Talk:Woolworth Building

Woolworth Building has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
October 15, 2019	Good article nominee	Listed

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on April 24, 2004, April 24, 2013, and April 24, 2020.

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WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Minor formatting cleanup

The PDFlink template won't work right inside a citation template. But there's another way: add "format=PDF" to the citation template. See Template talk:PDFlink#PDFLink with Citation Templates. Fixed. --John Nagle (talk) 02:58, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removed advertising

Removed "Popular culture" section which promoted a recent movie. That's inappropriate, per WP:TRIVIA. Especially when there's a "viral marketing" campaign underway for the movie. --John Nagle (talk) 03:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The other building?

In the last image, of the building under construction, shows another large building under construction nearby. I can't seem to find this on google maps. Any idea what this building is? Maury (talk) 00:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the Manhattan Municipal Building. The construction dates match up, and if this photo was taken from the south (looking north-east along Broadway) then the positions match too. The Manhattan Municipal Building is located to the east of the Woolworth Building, across City Hall. Booglamay (talk) - 17:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Maury (talk) 19:22, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Info to add for the IN POPULAR CULTURE section:

Hello, I'm not sure who handles the updates on the Woolworth Building article. I didn't want to make changes cause I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, but there was a bit of information I would like to ask to have added to the "In Popular Culture" section: In the 1957 film "Twelve Angry Men", Juror 12 looks out of the window with Juror 8 at the beginning of the movie and points out, "Is that the Woolworth Building?" and comments that through all his life living in New York City that he's never been inside of it. -TC (7/2/2013)

Unfortunately, these are all unsourced/unimportant, so these cannot be added. Here is a list of other entries without either significance or sources: epicgenius (talk) 00:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The film Five and Ten (1931) is loosely based on Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton and has many references to "the tower" that is being built. The main characters, played by Marion Davies and Leslie Howard, get stranded overnight atop the skyscraper.
In Winner Take All (1932), Jimmy (James Cagney) sends Peggy (Marian Nixon) a post card with the picture of the Woolworth Building.
In On the Town (1949), one of the sailors on leave in Manhattan (Frank Sinatra) uses an out-of-date guidebook which states that the Woolworth is the tallest building in the world.
In Singin' in the Rain (1952), set in 1927, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) laments the colossal failure of his latest film, "The Dueling Cavalier" saying after its release, nobody would come to see him jump off the Woolworth Building into a damp rag.
In Spider-Man 2 (2004), Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) delivers a number of pizzas to a receptionist (Emily Deschanel) at the building.
In the opening scenes of Cloverfield (2008), the building is seen collapsing after Clover critically damages it, causing a dust cloud to flood through nearby streets.
In Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of The Great Gatsby (2013), Nick Carraway works in the building as a stock broker for Chase. An early scene shows a spectacular tilt down from the top of the building.
The "Woodworld Building" in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) mimics the Woolworth Building in its name, architectural style, and street address number. The building also appears in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, but only its bottom floors are rendered due to the game's top-down angle.
Exterior shots of the building were used to establish the headquarters of fictional cable television channel "The Explorer's Channel" which employed Paul Buchman (Paul Reiser) in season four of the 1990s sitcom Mad About You.
The sheet music for the song "Woolworth Rag" by Henri Klickmann shows an artwork of the Woolworth Building in the cover.

Woolworth Building Construction

The article is written very much from a property dealer's / financier's point of view. It gives only limited material on the architectural effort and philosophy, and even less about the structural approach and principles. The greatest disappointment to me is that the CONSTRUCTION of this early masterpiece is not even mentioned. Who were the principal CONTRACTORS? Which firm detailed and supplied the steelwork for the frame of this 100-year old skyscraper? What form of cranes were used to erect the structure? How many tons of steel (Was Milliken Brothers involved?), cubic yards of concrete, tons of marble and cladding, square feet of glass? How many workers on site at the peak of construction? How many deaths? The names of the construction managers would be far more interesting (and deserved) than the identities of all the post-achievement parasites who profited from the end product. Could some construction historian expand on the creation of this ground-breaking masterpiece? This article compares very poorly with e.g., the Wiki entry on the Golden Gate Bridge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Questor74 (talk • contribs) 09:25, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Very few of the specific questions you asked about the construction are particularly encyclopedic in nature. You would expect to find them in a book about the building, but not in an encyclopedia article. Mentioning the contractor would be fine, but the source for the steel is trivial. The stats on steel, marble etc. would make a passable single sentence, but that's about it. The architectural philosophy, on the other hand, is quite relevant, as it goes to the way the building looks. If you have information on that, you should add it to the article. BMK (talk) 10:12, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I beg to disagree about what constitutes triviality. Tenants come and go, and references in popular culture are hardly what one would find in encyclopedia entries. A single sentence about its construction highlights would not do the achievement credit, but neither would one need a book. The creation of a lasting monument of Woolworth's significance certainly justifies a few paragraphs about its essence (structure) and its physical creation.Questor74 (talk) 19:41, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

deaths during construction

For other large projects like the Golden Gate bridge and empire state building, one can find information on how many workers died during construction But I was unable to find such info for the WW building in a quick google anyone have any info ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.130.228.122 (talk) 22:49, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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I added a link to a recent online publication with research on the Woolworth Building, in part drawn from a collection of architectural plans and drawings acquired by Vanderbilt University in 2015. Reklaw9 (talk) 14:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Woolworth Building/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vami IV (talk · contribs) 20:48, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Opening statement

In reviews I conduct, I may make small copyedits. These will only be limited to spelling and punctuation (removal of double spaces and such). I will only make substantive edits that change the flow and structure of the prose if I previously suggested and it is necessary. For replying to Reviewer comment, please use Done, Fixed, Added, Not done, Doing..., or Removed, followed by any comment you'd like to make. I will be crossing out my comments as they are redressed, and only mine. A detailed, section-by-section review will follow. —♠Vami _IV†♠ 20:48, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Disclosure. I have reviewed some of the nominee's articles in the past and passed each once of them. –♠Vami _IV†♠ 20:48, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Architecture

The decision to place "Architecture" before "History" is a unique one to me.

~~Several grotesques located are at points where the arcade's north and south wings intersect the mezzanine; they depict major figures involved in the Woolworth Building's construction. Condense.~~
- Done
~~Condense the paragraph about the pool under "Basement".~~
- Done
~~"Replicas" would be better under "Cultural impact", since the only relation the discussed replica has with the genuine article (haha I'm so clever) is that it's a 1/3rd-scale model.~~
- Done
- In regards to placing "architecture" before "history", this is done to give more context to the history section. It was a hard decision, but this appears to be the best way to balance the article content. epicgenius (talk) 14:02, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - I feel you. Deciding what should go where on the basis of context is my least favorite part of the writing process. –♠Vami _IV†♠ 16:54, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

History

Gilbert was originally retained to design a standard 12- to 16-story commercial building for Woolworth.[47] This plan initially suited Woolworth; he later said that he originally "had no desire to erect a monument that would cause posterity to remember me".[48] Condense. There's a lot of the same thing here, namely that Woolworth didn't at first want to make a splash. Try instead: Gilbert was originally retained to design a standard 12- to 16-story commercial building for Woolworth,[47] who later said he "had no desire to erect a monument that would cause posterity to remember me".[48]
- Fixed
The sentence about Irving Underhill is a bit of a sore thumb. It's out of place and kind of lacking for details, like when exactly Underhill was hired. If you built another paragraph about Woolworth's hype campaign for the (start of) construction, this would naturally be a perfect addition. Otherwise move to "In media".
- Done moved to "In media".
~~[...] was believed at the time to be the largest contract for foundation construction ever awarded in the world. "Believed" strong implies the possibility of this not being the case.~~
- Fixed I used the word "described". epicgenius (talk) 14:49, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to have modern conversions for the fiscal figures mentioned in the article? Four million dollars is a lot even today, but $1.50 a day is a criminal wage in 2019. Disregard this bullet-point if 'no'.
- Done I added figures to some of the figures. epicgenius (talk) 14:49, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

What's with all the |language= parameters for English-language sources?
- It is enabled by default when Visual Editor generates a ref. epicgenius (talk) 03:14, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GA progress

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()

3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()

Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.