Abraj Al-Bait Tower under construction in Mecca will be the world's largest building.
Does this building look somehow familiar? The pointed center tower surrounded by minions and topped with a gold sculpture, the embracing wings, the arched entrance in the foreground and the side arcades; is there not a family resemblance to Manhattan’s Municipal Building?
The Manhattan Municipal Building (1909-1914)
Mecca’s Abraj Al-Bait wouldn’t be the first love child of the Municipal Building, long linked by DNA to Cleveland’s Terminal Tower, Detroit’s Fisher Building and Chicago’s Wrigley Building. A cold war affair with Josef Stalin yielded Moscow’s Seven Sisters and Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science. More recently, Moscow’s Triumph-Palace has continued the bloodline. On his encyclopedic New York Architecture website, Tom Fletcher charts the Municipal Building’s influence and traces its roots to ancient Greece by way of 12th century Seville’s La Giralda minaret. With this lineage, Abraj Al-Bait might be said to have brought the minaret to Mohammad, but its genes seem more Muni-ish than Moorish.
Chambers Street trolleys originally passed through its foreground triumphal arch and the center of the Municipal Building, and it had open arcades under both its north and south wings.
Liverpool's Royal Liver Building (1908-1911) is thought by some to be the Municipal Building's daddy. (photo: Chris Howells)
An update to Abraj Al-Bait's design adds clock faces, drawing a more direct line to the Royal Liver Building.