Look Up: The Midtown Tower with Commuter Jet Aspirations to and from Uptown

Image via Complex Original

Most mid-block buildings in New York have blank sidewalls that anticipate the eventual construction of adjoining masses. Designed by the firm of Buchman & Fox, the elaborate façade of the World’s Tower includes numerous intricate figures holding up the cornices, among other fine details.

Rather than waste money decorating a face that will eventually be covered, most developers elect to save and leave these walls blank. Edward West Browning, however, decided that purchasing the adjoining lots and keeping them undeveloped would better secure his investment. With additional windows on the sides, he would be able to attract better tenants. Despite the questionable logic of this strategy, it is still difficult, even today, to find a development that doesn’t maximize its floor plate to the fullest width possible. 

Following the completion of the World’s Tower, Browning built a couple apartments on the Upper West Side, but soon gave up real estate for his other, more scandalous, interests. By the time of his death in 1934, he was tangled in numerous, not to mention infamous, affairs. Most famous were the scandals of “Daddy” Browning’s child bride and the subsequent divorce. 

While still married to his first wife, Adele, Browning put out an ad looking for young girls to adopt. They settled with two and when they divorced only a couple of years later, they split the children. Dorothy stayed with Edward, and when she soon became lonesome, he took out another ad looking for another girl to adopt. This “young” girl turned out to be not so young—she was 21-years-old and Browning had the adoption annulled. During his third attempt at finding a companion for Dorothy, he fell in love with the teen, and decided to marry the girl instead. Frances Belle “Peaches” Heenan, at the age of 15, became the next Mrs. Browning.

The marriage lasted 10 months before Peaches filed a lawsuit. In court she made numerous allegations that the Jazz-era tabloids found irresistible. The case soon went national. Despite all the negative press, Browning eventually won at court and was granted his terms for the divorce. In what turned out to be the last eight years of his life, he neither remarried nor spent time with another woman.

Just as Browning’s lifestyle tested social conventions, so too did his properties. In most cases, his spectacular ideas were nothing more than wishful thinking, perhaps insightful but even today unrealized (and abnormal). In addition to his call for windows at the World’s Tower, Browning had plans to launch bomber plans from its tiny roof and use the space as a landing for a commuter plane so that he could arrive to work from his uptown apartment.

In retrospect, maybe the only reasonable idea Browning ever had was to build his tower with windows on all four sides.