MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 1: The collision on July 28, 1945, of an Army Air Corps B-25 with the Empire State Building was perhaps the inevitable consequence of man's simultaneous conquest of the skies with skyscraper and aircraft during the first half of the 20th Century. At the time it must have struck observers as particularly fateful and ironic that one of the world's largest aircraft, also known as a Billy Mitchell Bomber, managed to blunder into the world's tallest building.

The bomber crew, lost in a Saturday morning fog on approach to Newark Airport, struck the skyscraper's north face between the 78 and 79th floors, killing all three crewmen and 11 office workers. The crash happened just 17 days before wild celebrations would take place in Times Square and elsewhere with the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.

In a scene familiar to television viewers in 2001, parts of flaming wreckage passed completely through the landmark tower and landed on rooftops and streets below. Other sections severed elevator cables, causing elevator cars and debris to plummet down the shafts. Although the resulting fire burned for an hour, the structural integrity of the Empire State Building remained sound and repairs were eventually completed.

In an eerily similar crash less than a year later on May 20, 1946, a small Coast Guard aircraft plowed into the 58th floor of the fog-shrouded Bank of Manhattan Co. Building (now the Trump Building) at 40 Wall St. Four airmen died in this accident. All office workers were spared in this Monday wreck that caused only superficial damage to the tower.

The imperative that calls for wide separation between building and aircraft was set aside in a scheme to exploit the advantages of aviation and tall buildings. Starting in 1965, helicopter service between the rooftop of the then Pan Am Building in Midtown and New York-area airports was launched. Flights were suspended four years later, but were revived on February 1, 1977.

On May 16, 1977, disaster struck when the landing gear collapsed on a 30-seat New York Airways helicopter that was boarding passengers headed for JFK International Airport. With the rotor blades spinning, the aircraft rolled over on its side, spraying blade shards over the Pan Am Building helipad and the surrounding neighborhood. Some landed as far away as four blocks from the stricken aircraft. Four passengers about to board were killed, and one pedestrian died on the street below, permanently ending this experiment in high-rise aviation.

For those who chose A, you may have recalled that all mail sent to the World Trade Center was addressed with the complex's exclusive zip code 10048. None of the other towers in question contained enough postal customers to qualify for this distinction.

Answer B was true for three of the five towers, as both the World Trade Center Towers and the Empire State Building struggled for years to draw sufficient tenants. The other two suffered no such difficulties. The MetLife Building, straddling the tracks of Grand Central Terminal, was particularly attractive office space for weary rail commuters of the 1960s.

Answer D: The Empire State Building replaced the first Waldorf Astoria Hotel, memorable for its opulence and quirky history (a family rivalry resulting in two hotels run as one), but the structure was graceless and past its prime by the late 1920s. Apparently few mourned the passing of this old dowager.

The MetLife Building started life in a maelstrom of controversy, not because it destroyed a beautiful, old landmark, but because its broad-shouldered, disproportionate mass obliterated a gracious vista of building and boulevard looking south along Park Avenue.

The World Trade Center created a furor among the residents and businessmen of the neighborhood it was replacing, but no great masterpieces of architecture were threatened by this twin exercise in grandiosity. BACK TO QUESTION 1.

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MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 4: Perhaps no single two-block section of the city has served a wider variety of uses than the area bounded by Fifth and Sixth avenues between 40th and 42nd streets, now known as Bryant Park.

A hunting ground for Natve Americans and later for early European settlers of Manhattan, this modest hilltop later proved useful to a growing city to the south. Initially, town officials had the remains of the indigent carted here for burial between 1823 and 1840.

In a move that seems startlingly unhygienic, they then decided this property's elevation made it ideal for water storage and distribution. A massive, aboveground lake was constructed between 1839 and 1843 on the present site of the library. With 25-foot-thick, sloping-granite walls rising 50 feet above the street, the Croton Distributing Reservoir had to be the most imposing structure in mid-19th century New York.

The unused property to the west was dubbed Reservoir Square, later the site of New York's and America's first world's fair in 1853. Exhibits were housed in a sprawling exposition hall of iron and glass called the Crystal Palace (pictured to the left of question 4), inspired by the building of the same name erected for London's world's fair of 1851. New York's version of the structure, supposedly fireproof, burned to the ground in 1858.

Three years later, the War Between the States necessitated the conversion of the former fairgrounds into parade grounds for drilling Union army conscripts and volunteers.

Other uses undoubtedly followed the training of combatants before the idea of designating the land as a city park took hold. In 1884, it was renamed Bryant Park in honor of William Cullen Bryant, a poet and newspaper editor who championed urban-park development, including the creation of Central Park.

With the imposing Croton Reservoir to the east and the new elevated railway along Sixth Avenue to the west, which had begun operations in 1878, it was hardly the most sublime space in the city. The status of the park was such that when "the El" was pulled down in 1938 and replaced with a subway, the construction company was permitted to use Bryant Park as a storage yard for building materials and a temporary trash heap for construction debris.

It would take decades of effort by city officials and the public, and a major cultural shift along 42nd Street during the 1990s, before the park was restored to its present-day sheen and popularity. BACK TO QUESTION 4.

MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 5: An icon of Manhattan's skyline, the Chrysler Building grabbed tallest-in-the-world honors briefly in 1930 in a race for the sky involving three Manhattan skyscrapers. The first of the three to claim the title as the world's tallest was the Bank of Manhattan Company Building, completed early in 1930. Now called the Trump Building, this bank tower at 40 Wall St. topped out at 927-feet (283 m). The spire of the Chrysler Building nosed the Bank of Manhattan Company Building a few months later. The Chrysler Building itself was overtaken in height by the Empire State Building (1250 ft./381 m) less than a year later. All structures in New York City now look up to newer, taller structures built elsewhere.

Extra Credit, Question 5: The Bank of Manhattan Company Building eventually lost third place to the Cities Service Building, built in 1932 just one block east at 70 Pine St. This art deco confection served as Downtown Manhattan headquarters for a now defunct oil company. The Cities Service Building, now called the American International Building, and the neighboring Trump Building are pictured at left in the detail of The Manhattan Skyline — A Hudson River Portrait. BACK TO QUESTION 5.

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MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 8: .If you guessed Clinton, you chose either a sitting US senator (Hillary Clinton), after whom nothing is named at present, or the former New York State governor and New York City mayor De Witt Clinton (1769-1828). The names of numerous locales and structures in New York City honor this administrator. Another frequently saluted name, Roosevelt, refers to Theodore (1858-1919) and Franklin (1882-1945). TR served in the New York State Assembly and was vice president under McKinley. Both men held the offices of New York governor and president of the United States. Neither served in the US Senate. BACK TO QUESTION 8.

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MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 9: The original Fraunces Tavern was constructed in 1719 as a private home, later to become a tavern, government offices and a meeting house. George Washington spent his last ten days here as commander in chief of the Continental Army before departing for Mt. Vernon at the end of the Revolutionary War. Long-term decay and a fire nearly erased this building from the Manhattan cityscape before a new structure took shape in 1904, based on conjecture what the original might have looked like.

The father of American democracy also figured in two other choices in the quiz question. Washington's inauguration as America's first president took place at the first Federal Hall, built in 1699. The present Federal Hall is an 1842 replacement. Although Washington's statue overlooks Wall St. from the steps of the second Federal Hall, he never set eyes on this Greek-Revival structure, having died in 1799, more than four decades before its completion.

Washington also made frequent visits to St. Paul's Chapel for worship, including a special post-inauguration service in 1789. Washington would recognize the present-day sanctuary and columned porch of the chapel but would be startled by the soaring tower and steeple, which weren't completed until 1796, six years after his last visit to the city. St. Paul's Chapel gained renewed notoriety as a locus for public grieving following the destruction of the nearby World Trade Center in 2001.

The last choice, Trinity Church, is the third Anglican Church structure built on this site. The first was consecrated in 1689 and was destroyed in a fire in 1766. The second Trinity Church opened its doors in 1790 but was demolished in 1839 because of structural defects. The present brownstone church is a Richard Upjohn design completed in 1846.

The oldest building in all five boroughs of New York is reportedly the Dutch Colonial farmhouse called the Claesen Wyckoff House, built in 1652 in what is now the Flatlands area of Brooklyn. BACK TO QUESTION 9.

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MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 10: The principal designer of the Queensboro Bridge, Gustav Lindenthal, broke the precedent set by two predecessor spans over the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge (1883) and the Williamsburg Bridge (1903), by choosing a cantilever design to connect Manhattan Island with Long Island. Lindenthal believed cantilever bridges were superior to suspension designs for withstanding the stresses of rail traffic slated to use the bridge, a contention that much later was borne out. The Queensboro and a third suspension span, The Manhattan Bridge, were both started in 1901 and both opened for traffic in 1909.

The Triborough Bridge is a complex of three "long-span" projects and numerous smaller bridges connecting Long Island, Randalls Island, Ward Island, Manhattan Island and the mainland spanning three different rivers. The suspension bridge of the project hurdles the East River, linking Long Island with Ward Island. The bridge over the Harlem River that connects Randalls and Manhattan islands is a lift bridge. Although Randalls and Ward islands are part of the Borough of Manhattan, they are not contiguous to Manhattan Island. This massive construction project, which began in 1929, was finished in 1936 after being stalled three years because of economic constraints of the Great Depression. BACK TO QUESTION 10.

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MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 11: For the record, Edward Clark Potter designed the beasts. The Piccirilli brothers carved them in 1911. Originally they were nicknamed Leo Astor and Leo Lenox after library founders John Jacob Astor and James Lenox. Lord Astor and Lady Lenox were a later preference. LaGuardia proposed the names that stuck after observing these qualities in New Yorkers weathering the harsh times of the Depression. BACK TO QUESTION 11.

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MORE INFORMATION — QUESTION 12: Behind every nickname is a subtle, or not-so-subtle, characteristic worthy of wry comment. The Woolworth Building earned its nickname when designer Cass Gilbert lavished church-like Gothic Revival details on a commercial tower design for the preeminent chain retailer of the turn of the previous century.

The "XYZ" moniker sprang from the observation by many that the extension of Rockefeller Center to the west side of Sixth Avenue involved three buildings of nearly identical design. These seemingly interchangeable structures, conceived by architect Wallace Harrison, are the Exxon Building (1971), the MacGraw-Hill Building (1972), and the Celanese Building (1973).

"The Tombs" harkens to the Egyptian Revival detailing of the first criminal justice facility that once occupied a swampy site across the street from the present-day structure. It's not inconceivable the nickname persists because of the resemblance of dreary isolation between an ancient burial chamber and a jail cell.

Usually the bestowing of the moniker follows the official designation. Not in the case of Clinton and Hell's Kitchen, where the process was reversed. The nickname Hell's Kitchen had been used for decades to describe a neighborhood starkly down on its luck. Clinton represented an official effort in the mid-20th century to rename the area in anticipation of the more genteel neighborhood it has become.

Owners of the completed Empire State Building opened its doors in 1931 to the most wrenching economic downturn in US history. Ongoing difficulties filling its 2.1 million square feet of office space prompted one wag to coin this play on words.

New York's notorious Tammany Hall leader William "Boss" Tweed lined his pockets and those of his friends by pillaging funds used to construct the New York County Courthouse between 1861 and 1872. Investigations into huge cost overruns involving this project helped to finally bring Tweed to justice.

The "Gold Coast" describes a Manhattan neighborhood with a long-standing reputation for wealth, beginning at the turn of the last century with the influx of the moneyed classes into luxurious mansions along Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The zip code with the highest per capita income in New York City, if no longer the country, is still 10021, located on the Upper East Side. BACK TO QUESTION 12.

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