Oh, stop blaming the Equitable Building.

Urban lore says that the massive Equitable Building at 120 Broadway in Lower Manhattan — a 40-story extrusion of a whole city block, unrelieved by setbacks and capable of housing 16,000 workers at once — was responsible for the enactment 100 years ago, on July 25, 1916, of New York City’s first Zoning Resolution.

But while the completion of the building in 1915 added fuel, the fire was already burning. New York, it had been agreed for some time, was spinning out of control.

For one thing, the city’s new privately built subway system was spurring a huge speculative development boom along its route. (It is no coincidence that some of the biggest apartment buildings on the Upper West Side — the Ansonia, the Apthorp and the Belnord — are a block or less from a subway stop.)