What is the most impressive public/commercial building you've ever seen first-hand? [Details]?

Two that I can think of offhand are The Breakers, which is the largest Vanderbilt mansion in Newport RI.

Another impressive one is San Simeon, aka Hearst Castle in California.

I’m sure I can think of more.

I have seen San Simeon, @jca, and it is indeed impressive.
I’ll have to look at The Breakers, as it is unfamiliar to me. The Biltmore has had my crush since the movie, “Being There”.

I forgot to reply to my own question that The Radio City Music Hall prompted me to ask.

As you think of more, please post.

The Breakers:

http://www.newportmansions.org/explore/the-breakers

I’ll have to stick with my Radio City Music Hall for now, @jca.

I honestly feel guilt on seeing the Robber Baron’s mansions and admiring them.

@ibstubro: You could look at it as during the Gilded Age, the robber barons’ mansions employed a lot of people, and they were pretty decent jobs, too. Housekeepers, landscapers, architects, secretaries, cooks, painters, upholsterers, etc. Many of the staff would live on the properties, and the owners may only have visited those mansions for a few months per year.

Populations more than small towns, @jca. Gotcha.

The Chrysler Building in New York City.

http://www.tishmanspeyer.com/properties/chrysler-center

What do you mean by public/commercial? You mean not something like the Great Pyramid or St. Peter’s Basilica? It has to involve secular collection of money, and be visitable?

Versailles
Le Louvre
Chåteau de Chambordâteau_de_Chambord#mediaviewer/File:Chambord_Castle_Northwest_facade.jpg
Chartres cathedral

Marin County Civic Center.

Frank Fucking Lloyd Fucking Wright.

Though I have seen the Golden Gate bridge, the Sydney Opera House, and other things like that, I am most impressed by Pike Place Market and the accompanying tunnel work in Seattle. There is just something about how the way the multiple buildings just organically meld together that impresses me.
If you’ve never been there, or even if you looked at it inline, you’ve only seen the above-ground portion on the Northern end, missed the other half, and thus won’t see the part of it that I am so impressed by.

The zeppelin hangers in Tustin, CA

http://www.tustinhistory.com/articles/lta.htm

The Coliseum

The first time I saw The Chrysler building, @BeenThereSaidThat, it was unguarded. I might have been able to make it to the view at the top. Next visit there was a guard at every elevator. Damn.

No, those work, @Zaku. I was simply trying to avoid “My own little patch of heaven” responses.

Impressive, @gailcalled. I am truly envious. International terrorism has definitely reversed the “The world gets smaller every day” trend. At least as far as physicality.

Frank Lloyd Wright has been the motivation for much of my travel @SecondHandStoke. Taliesin was amazing.

Visiting the Northwest is on my short list of things I’d like so do @jerv I’ll put Pike Place Market on the short list’s short list.

Whoa. Never heard of them before, @boffin Impressive.

Impossible for me to imagine, @janbb. Envy again.

Ok, then for me, probably it is St. Peter’s Basilica, in Vatican City, as far as overall impressive buildings go, though I have been all over Europe and the United States and some other places, so I might be forgetting someplace. The Louvre museum and The British Museum are both extremely impressive, though mainly for the art inside them.

Hoover Dam. I drove across it many times when I lived in Las Vegas. I once had a school field trip to the dam and we toured the inside of the dam and traveled to the bottom. There were spots inside the dam where small amounts of water seeped through the concrete. It was a terrifying experience.

I saw a bunch of castles in Ireland that were pretty impressive. Two I can think of offhand are Kilkenny Castle in Kilkenny and St. John’s Castle in Limerick. They were not the hugest of buildings, like Versailles or the huge castles of today’s royals in England, nor the fanciest, but so cool nevertheless. St. John’s was built on a Viking settlement, which has been excavated recently.

I’ve heard the Basilica is very impressive, @Zaku. If/as you think of others, feel free to post again.

Hoover Dam is indeed impressive, @jonsblond. I took a Vegas trip because it was cheap and used the time to explore the west. Do you know that the TV show about ‘after humans’ predicted that the area around Hoover Dam would be the last in the world to have electricity? The nation at the least [I’ve lost all my links].

I’d love to see Ireland @jca. I have Scotch/Irish heritage and it has always tugged at me.

I don’t know if this counts, but the Catedral de Sal in Colombia made a big impression on me. It’s a Catholic church in a salt mine. You basically are walking into a cave. The Stations of the Cross are carved from the mountain. There is just a small bit of light that lines your way through the church. The baptismal font has stone on the ground, like a flooring, and one of them you can lift, and there is water running below. They take that water from the earth to use for the baptism. I enjoyed it more than the Vatican I think, because as incredible and impressive as the Vatican is, the materialism detracts from it for me.

Sounds wonderful, @JLeslie. I too am distracted by too much materialism. I read a book recently where one of the characters said you should never spend more than a couple-few hours at a large museum. Better to make multiple trips, or have a great appreciation for what you did take in.

I think there’s a lot to be said for that.

I forgot the links.

Salt Cathedral in Wikipediaá

Also I recommend you google Salt Cathedral Colombia in google and check out the photos that come up. I can’t get a link to work for that.

Here Cathedral of Zipaquirá is @JLeslie‘s link.

Beautiful.

St. Peter’s was the most impressive, and has amazing art inside. I’ve seen many other very impressive cathedrals in Europe:

A favorite is Notre Dame in Paris
Gail already mentioned Chartres (see stained glass windows).
Domkirche St. Stephan, Vienna
St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague
Kölner Dom, Köln
Siena Cathedral
La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

And in the USA:
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City

Impressive non-cathedrals:

The World Trade Center was amazing to go up on the roof of. It definitely gave the impression of being in another part of the atmosphere, like being in a plane but able to walk around. Moreso than other skyscrapers I’ve been in (which make you stay inside) such as the (formerly-named) Sears Tower. It didn’t quite feel right.

The Empire State Building was also impressive and I liked it more than other skyscrapers, though some others are taller. It also lets you step outside.

I was impressed by the King Dome in Seattle before they blew it up to collect corrupt money from building two more stadiums, but the detonation was also impressive.

Of course, being impressed by a building is one thing, but enjoying and appreciating and other impressions one can get from traveling seem to me even more the reasons I choose to travel, and make up more of the benefit of it. Leaving my own familiar places and culture give me the experience of a whole other way of life and thinking, just by walking down a street in some other country. Firenze (Italy) for instance is a particularly rewarding place to visit, and sure there are some impressive things, perhaps mostly just seeing most of the city from the hill on the far side of the river, and yes it has a world-class museum and several others and amazing churches… but walking through the streets or along the river are what I treasure most. (I don’t recommend trying to drive their, though.)

And, both for impressions and for being impressed, I still find nature beats all human efforts, and makes me sad that we have destroyed so much nature for so little in return, especially with our crude short-sighted commercial developments.

^^ When I saw all the red, I assumed Kardamom was back.