The spire of the German Evangelical Protestant Church (now Smithfield United Church of Christ), designed by Henry Hornbostel and finished in 1926, was the first structural use of aluminum. Behind it, the Alcoa Building, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and finished in 1953, was the first skyscraper entirely clad in aluminum.
To old Pa Pitt’s eye, this is the most charming part of the Alcoa Building, famous for introducing aluminum as a material for the shell of a skyscraper. The rest of the building still looks like a stack of 1950s television sets to him, but this projection, with its angled glass and staggered panes and weird little space-age hoop, is what he wishes the whole building looked like.
