It’s History

The City Investing Building had many names in its time, but none of them saved it from destruction. Starting as a project from a prolific designer, it hosted countless businesses as residents before facing demolition, one of the tallest of its time to fall as it did. In recent times, its echoes are silent, and its legacy lies mostly forgotten. Today, however, it comes out of the shadows once more.

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From the Telegraph's ashes arises its successor; the Telephone. Starting as a modification to the harmonic telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell's magnum opus changed communication forever. Sparking an entire industry that connected nations worldwide, monopolies rose and fell, government regulations shifted, all while interconnection expanded.

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An ever-shrinking collection of the US Navy's most storied ships lies in a bay near San Francisco. This National Defense Reserve Fleet held war heroes, masters of espionage, and behind-the-scenes vessels that the Navy could not function without. Some met a cruel fate in a scrapyard, others found a grandiose museum as their new home, but all were influential in the organization that put them out to pasture.

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New York City is the pinnacle example of American development. Being the most populated city in the United States, it requires a tremendous amount of infrastructure - chief Among the most important of these systems is its waterworks which have a long and complex past. Today we discover a fascinating tale of underground piping, aqueducts, forgotten tanks, and the longest tunnel in the world!

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Across the south of New Jersey, there are 1.1 million acres of pine forest. From the northern part of Ocean Country down to Cape May, the Pinelands National Reserve occupied 22% of the state's land area and is the largest body of open space on the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard between Moston and Richmond. Additionally, 45 percent of the region, or around 493,000 acres, are owned by the public. However, a part of this reserve is of particular note, sourcing several urban legends such as the Jersey devil. This is the story of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

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The lost St Paul building, Designed by George B. Post, constructed from 1895 to 1898, and named for the St. Paul Chapel across Broadway. This masterpiece once towered over lower Manhattan's Financial District as one of the first—and tallest—skyscrapers in New York City at 26 stories and 315 feet tall. Its Ionic-style colonnades stood out from the other superstructures of its time. But it was also this very same unique style that made it one of the most critically received buildings in the city's history. In the modern-day, the story of the St. Paul Building has long been lost to time but today we will bring it back to life.

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As one of the busiest vehicular tunnels in the world and a cousin tunnel to the highly successful Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel sees over 100,000 cars every single day and around 21 million a year. It connects New York to New Jersey and serves as an incredibly strong connection between the two states— today on It's History, we will discover the story of the Lincoln Tunnel.

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Sprawling beneath the busy streets of New York lays an incredible steam system that provides heat to many of the city's most iconic landmarks— the steam stacks, to many, serving as icons all their own. Today on It's History, we will discover the history of the New York City steam lines.

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Once the tallest building in New York City and the tallest office building in the world, the World Building of New York is no longer present in its skyline. Officially known as the Pulitzer Building, named for the same man as the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, this building had an extensive history despite being wiped from the map. Tied to both the American Civil War and the Second World War, one can feel its presence over decades, and it still has reverberations to this day.

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Street signs are one of the most common sights in your average city, but the average tourist often does not think of them. But just as the city of Chicago is not average, nor is their street signs. It has shuffled through many designs throughout history before ending with what it has today. And the type it is known for is not in service today but is by no means gone.

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