On Broadway, north of Wall Street, the commercial offerings of one storefront blend into the next. Banks, shoe stores, and stationery shops alternate with Duane Reade pharmacies and signs advertising space for rent: “MAGNIFICENT CORNER STORE. 1100 SQ. FT. OF BROADWAY FRONTAGE.” From the ground it is difficult to distinguish one skyscraper from the next and to realize that this particular sign graces a window of the famous Woolworth Building, legendary in 1913 as the “cathedral of commerce.” The relationships among exterior and interior, reputation and function, spectacle and commerce in New York skyscrapers lie at the heart of this essay, which examines dime-store magnate Frank Woolworth and his architect Cass Gilbert's calculated use of Gothic decorative motifs in the grandest New York skyscraper of their day. The Woolworth Building features a Gothic portal with grotesques symbolizing commerce, a lobby based on a Latin-cross plan, decorated with Byzantine-style mosaics and triptych murals figuring Labor and Commerce, and numerous pinnacles, buttresses, ogive windows, and gargoyles. The effect was so grandiose that an early British visitor declared the skyscraper a “cathedral of commerce” unrivaled by anything in London.