Located at the corner of Park Row and the now closed Frankfort Street, the New York World Building was the tallest of several high-rise structures built for major newspapers in the late 19th century. Commissioned by the famous editor Joseph Pulitzer and designed by the prolific architect George B. Post, the World (also known as Pulitzer Building) was the first building in New York to surpass the 284-foot spire of Trinity Church. It stretched 309 feet to the top of the lantern (measured from the steep grade of Frankfort Street rather than the main frontage on Park Row). The number of stories is disputed; estimates range from the 26 stories claimed by the World to the 16 or 18 suggested by recent scholars. Pulitzer placed his private office at the second level of the dome where he could easily look down on the other buildings of Newspaper Row. The paper used the lower floors and basements for its large presses and the sunlit top floors for copy-editing; the remainder were rented out to tenants, generating income for the World.
 
The structural system of the World Building was a hybrid “cage” frame. Steel framing was used to support the interior structure, but the exterior masonry walls contributed lateral stability and some vertical support. Columns embedded in the exterior walls carried the floor loads, transferring lateral forces between the frame and the masonry. The facade was red sandstone, brick and terra-cotta, with red and gray granite at the arched entryway. In 1890, the building’s height appalled some critics who called it “high-shouldered” and “hideous.” The World Building was demolished in 1955 for the expanded automobile entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The 30-story Park Row Building was the tallest office building in the world from the time of its completion until the completion of the Singer Building in 1908. Built as a speculative office building by a syndicate of investors lead by August Belmont (also the entrepreneur behind the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), a private company responsible for the building and operation of the original subway line) the office block originally accommodated 950 offices and over 4,000 workers. It exploited the newly developed all steel-skeleton technology. The syndicate bought and consolidated seven smaller lots to create this large but very irregularly shaped site which lacked the corner lot. The exterior lacks the soaring profile and slender tower of the office buildings that would take the title of tallest building in the next decade, the Singer Building, Metropolitan Life Tower and Woolworth Building. The most distinctive elements of its design are the two three-story cupolas and four life-sized sculpted figures projecting from the fourth floor of the Park Row front.
 
Bron: nyc-architecture.com

The Park Row Building still stands today facing City Hall Park in lower Manhattan. Commissioned in 1896 by William Mills Ivins, the head of an investment group, the structure was built as speculative office space. It rises 386 feet to its cornice and 391 feet to the lanterns placed atop the structure; counting the four stories in the lanterns, the building is 30 stories tall. The interior could accommodate up to 1,000 offices, and was the home of the first IRT subway headquarters. Under the direction of architect R.H. Robertson and engineer Nathaniel Roberts, the building was under construction for over three years.
 
Bron: skyscraper.org