LATER this summer, 1 World Trade Center will top out at 1,776 feet. New York will again be proud to have the tallest building in the United States, a new landmark in the race for height. But is that really such a good thing? From the nativity of the skyscraper in the 1860s through its early adulthood in the 1900s, this kind of “progress” was more often denounced than embraced.

The 1868 Equitable Building, considered the direct antecedent of the skyscraper in New York, was only seven stories when it went up at Broadway and Cedar Street, so no one imagined that from its elevator would flow a remaking of the city. Reviews in The Real Estate Record and Guide did say “it dwarfs all surrounding objects,” but that was praise, since height lent the building “majesty.”

By contemporary standards the Equitable Building looks like a stumpy Second Empire courthouse, and in the 1870s the new crop of elevator buildings, barely 10 stories, was not yet perceived as a trend. The Record and Guide did deride the 10-story Western Union building of 1875 as a “costly folly” that would flood the market with square footage and prove economically unsound. But these early tall buildings were considered isolated events.