American International Building

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The American International Building is a 66-story, 952 foot (290 m) tall building in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The official address is 70 Pine Street, New York, NY 10270 and is also bordered by Cedar Street and Pearl Street. It was completed in 1932 by the Cities Service Company for the oil and gas baron Henry Latham Doherty. This was during the New York skyscraper race, which accounts for its gothic-like spire-topped appearance, a popular architectural style at that time. When completed it was the third tallest building in the world, after only the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

One of the most famous themes of the limestone-clad tower is a mountain with a snow cap. The building features an open air platform with an enclosed glass observatory above it on the 66th Floor, offering a view of downtown from any building. This observatory, which was once public, is now accessible only to executives and employees of AIG. The tower was originally and famously built with double-decker elevators that served two floors at a time to provide sufficient vertical service for the narrow tower and its limited elevator shafts. Soon afterwards, these elevators were removed because of their low popularity;[4] however, the Citigroup Center adopted this same idea in the 1970s.

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