Landmarks of North America

Famous buildings, bridges, castles, monuments and heritage sites, with the stories of how they were made.

11 to explore

Watch Landmark Brooklyn Bridge The Brooklyn Bridge crosses the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. Built from 1869 to 1883, it was the first bridge to use steel wire for its cables, and its main span was the longest in the world until 1890. Every day, cars, walkers and cyclists still cross it.
Watch Landmark Chichén Itzá Chichén Itzá is the ruin of a great Maya city on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its people built pyramids, a huge ball court and a round building for watching the sky. Its most famous pyramid, El Castillo, has 365 steps, as many as the days in a year.
Watch Landmark CN Tower The CN Tower in Toronto is 553 meters tall. It was built between 1973 and 1975 so that radio and TV signals could reach over the city's new tall buildings. For more than 30 years it was the tallest freestanding structure in the world, and today more than two million people visit it every year.
Watch Landmark Empire State Building The Empire State Building rises 1,454 feet (443 meters) over Fifth Avenue in New York City. Its steel frame went up at about four and a half floors a week, and the whole building was finished in one year and 45 days, opening on May 1, 1931.
Watch Landmark Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge crosses the Golden Gate, the strait where San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. Built from 1933 to 1937, it hangs from two huge steel cables slung over towers 746 feet (227 meters) above the water, and it is painted a color called International Orange.
Watch Landmark Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Met, stands on Fifth Avenue at the edge of Central Park in New York City. Founded in 1870, it is the largest art museum in the city, with art from ancient Egypt to today. Its grand front, with three arches and pairs of columns, was finished in 1902.
Watch Landmark Mount Rushmore Mount Rushmore is a granite mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota. From 1927 to 1941, nearly 400 workers carved the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln into it, each about 60 feet (18 meters) tall. Most of the rock was removed with dynamite.
Watch Landmark Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty stands on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. France gave her to the United States as a sign of friendship. The sculptor Auguste Bartholdi shaped her copper skin, Gustave Eiffel designed the iron frame inside, and she was dedicated in 1886.
Watch Landmark Teotihuacan Teotihuacan, about 50 kilometers northeast of Mexico City, was a huge city almost 2,000 years ago. A long, straight avenue runs through it, lined by giant pyramids, including the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. Around 500 CE, it was one of the largest cities in the world.
Watch Landmark White House The White House in Washington, D.C. is the home and office of the President of the United States. Building began in 1792, and President John Adams moved in on November 1, 1800. Its sandstone walls are painted white, and today it has 132 rooms.
Watch Landmark Willis Tower Willis Tower, first called the Sears Tower, is a skyscraper in Chicago finished in 1973. It is 442 meters tall and was the tallest building in the world for about 25 years. Its clever 'bundled tube' design was made by engineer Fazlur Khan and the firm SOM.