Frankfurt am Main was, next to Berlin, perhaps Germany’s most important center of 20th-century architectural developments. Its attempts to initiate an era of “New Building” with innovative social housing programs and extensive public works construction in the 1920s and its impressive post-World War II rebuilding program that culminated with the creation of a publicly funded “Museum Mile” in the 1980s have given Frankfurt an architectural prominence that far outweighs its modest size. The building of dozens of Europe’s tallest skyscrapers has made Frankfurt’s skyline similarly distinctive. Located on the Main River at the edge of western Germany’s densely populated Rhein-Main industrial area, Frankfurt is the capital of the German state of Hesse and one of Europe’s most important banking, commercial, industrial, and transportation centers. It began the 20th century as a province of Prussia under the guidance of Mayor Franz Adickes (1846–1915), who initiated a series of reform-minded urb...