Rising 11 stories, it wasn’t the tallest tower in the city. Nor did it win praise for how it made the most of its 21.5-foot frontage with a graceful Romanesque arched entrance. And it wasn’t financed by a Gilded Age business that planned to move in and make it company headquarters.

But the Tower Building, steps away from Bowling Green at 50 Broadway, has a singular distinction: it’s considered by many historians to be New York’s first skyscraper—defined as a building of 10 or more stories supported not by exterior masonry walls but by metal cage construction, according to the Skyscraper Museum.