The Empire State Building is a must-see attraction for anybody visiting New York City. The Empire State Structure, which opened in 1931, is the world’s most iconic office building, a historical monument, and “America’s Favorite Architecture” according to an American Institute of Architects survey. It’s no wonder that seeing this magnificent structure is one among the most popular things to do in New York.
The Empire State Building is located on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. The original location of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Fifth Avenue was also located on the site prior to its construction.
The Empire State Building
1. It was built as part of a competition to build the world’s highest structure.
Builders raced to build the world’s biggest skyscraper in the late 1920s, when New York’s economy was booming like never before. The main competition was between the Bank of Manhattan building at 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, an elaborate Art Deco structure designed by car mogul Walter Chrysler as a “monument to me.” Both towers tried to outdo each other by adding more floors to their designs, and the race heated up in August 1929, when GM executive John J. Raskob and former New York Governor Al Smith announced plans for the Empire State Building.
When Chrysler learned that the Empire State Building would be 1,000 feet tall, he made one more adjustment to his blueprints and added a stainless-steel spire to the top of his building. The Chrysler Building reached a new height of 1,048 feet as a result of the expansion, but unfortunately for Chrysler, Raskob and Smith just went back to the drawing board and came up with an even higher design for the Empire State Building. The colossus towered 1,250 feet above the streets of Midtown Manhattan when it was finished in 1931. It would hold the title of world’s tallest skyscraper for over 40 years, until the first World Trade Center tower was completed in 1970.
2. It was inspired by two previous structures.
Architect William Lamb of the company Shreve, Lamb and Harmon is reported to have fashioned the Empire State Building after the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Carew Tower in Cincinnati when he drew up its drawings in 1929. The Empire State Building’s architectural ancestors are now generally regarded as the two previous Art Deco skyscrapers. The Empire State Building’s general manager even sent a card to the Reynolds Building’s 50th anniversary in 1979, which said, “Happy Anniversary, Dad.”
3. The structure was completed in record time.
Despite its enormous scale, the Empire State Building’s design, planning, and construction took only 20 months from start to completion. Contractors Starrett Brothers and Eken employed an assembly line approach to create the new tower in 410 days after destroying the existing tenant, the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. They built its skeleton at a record rate of four and a half storeys per week, using as many as 3,400 workers per day—so rapidly that the first 30 floors were finished before critical elements of the bottom floor were approved. Although the Empire State Building was completed ahead of schedule and on budget, it came at a deadly cost: at least five people were killed during the building process.
4. Its higher tower was initially intended to serve as an airship mooring mast.
The Empire State Building’s 200-foot tower was by far the most distinctive part of its design. The building’s owners built the pole as a docking terminal for lighter-than-air dirigibles, believing that transatlantic airship travel was the trend of the future. The bizarre plan called for the airships to fly alongside the structure and connect themselves to a winching system. Passengers would then disembark the ship through an open-air gangplank, check in at a customs office, and walk seven minutes to Manhattan’s streets. Despite early excitement for the project, pilots found it nearly hard to navigate the strong winds near the building’s rooftop. A small dirigible hooked itself to the spire for a few minutes in September 1931, the closest thing to a “landing.” A Goodyear blimp dropped a stack of newspapers on the roof two weeks later as a publicity stunt, but the airship proposal was scrapped soon after.
5. It was first seen as a financial collapse.
The Empire State Building was built largely to house corporate offices, but due to the 1929 stock market fall and the commencement of the Great Depression, it had a rocky start. The building’s owners were forced to resort to publicity stunts to attract renters, including hosting a 1932 séance in which they attempted to contact the ghost of Thomas Edison from the 82nd floor, but the skyscraper’s upper half remained almost entirely vacant for most of the 1930s. Workers were also instructed to put on lights on higher floors to give the appearance that they were occupied. It wasn’t until World War II that the structure started to make profit.
6. In 1945, a B-25 bomber crashed with the Empire State Building.
Army Lt. Col. William F. Smith became distracted in heavy fog while flying an Army B-25 bomber into New York’s La Guardia Airport on July 28, 1945, and drifted over Midtown Manhattan. The World War II combat veteran avoided numerous towers, but he was unable to avoid driving into the Empire State Building’s 78th and 79th floors at 200 miles per hour. The collision resulted in a tremendous explosion that shattered the building’s interior. Smith and two crew members, as well as 11 others inside the building, were killed. A four-alarm fire broke out on multiple stories, becoming the city’s highest building fire in history, but firefighters were able to put it out in just 40 minutes. Surprisingly, the building’s undamaged sections were reopened for commerce barely two days later.
7. In one of the building’s elevators, a woman survived a 75-story fall.
Several components of the B-25 bomber’s engine ripped through the Empire State Building and into an elevator shaft during the 1945 bomber crash. Two vehicles’ cables were severed, one of which contained Betty Lou Oliver, a 19-year-old elevator operator. The elevator fell from the 75th floor and slammed into the sub basement, but Oliver was fortunate in that more than a thousand feet of cut elevator cable had gathered at the bottom of the shaft, cushioning the impact. A pocket of compressed air created by the car’s rapid descent may have also slowed the fall. Oliver lived despite severe injuries, including a fractured neck and back.
8. There was a proposal to add 11 storeys to the Empire State Building
A technique devised by an architect at the company Shreve, Lamb and Harmon shortly after the World Trade Center buildings were completed in the early 1970s, allowed the Empire State Building to retain its title as the world’s tallest structure. The building’s 16-story tower would be destroyed and rebuilt with a new top portion that would raise the building’s height to 113 floors and 1,495 feet. The restoration would have made the Empire Building higher than both the World Trade Center and the Sears Tower—both of which were under construction at the time—but it was swiftly shelved owing to financial issues and worries that it would ruin the building’s distinctive appearance.
9. A few daredevils have jumped from the observation deck of the structure.
In April 1986, British thrill seekers Alastair Boyd and Michael McCarthy acquired tickets to the Empire State Building’s 86th story observation deck, hid parachutes beneath their garments, and then launched themselves over the building’s observation deck. The two fell safely on 33rd Street, more than 1,000 feet below, but although McCarthy was immediately arrested, Boyd just caught a cab and fled. Both men were prosecuted with “reckless endangerment” and “unlawful parachuting” when he turned himself in. Twelve years later, Norwegian parachutist Thor Alex “The Human Fly” Kappfjell recreated the act by leaping off the building’s 34th street side. After escaping and parachuting from the Chrysler Building a few days later, Kappfjell was apprehended after falling off the World Trade Center.
10. For the 50th anniversary of the film, an inflatable King Kong was mounted to the Empire State Building, with mixed results.
The 1933 film “King Kong,” which culminates with the titular giant ape mounting the skyscraper and being assaulted by swarming biplanes, is the most renowned of the more than 90 films that include the Empire State Building. The original sequence was shot in a studio, but in April 1983, a balloon business president attempted to duplicate it by connecting an inflated King Kong to the Empire State’s mooring pole for the film’s 50th anniversary. The $150,000 stunt, however, did not proceed as planned. The 84-foot Kong balloon tore during inflation, sabotaging a plan to have it buzzed by vintage planes. It was ultimately inflated a few days later, but it only lasted a few days until another rip forced the project to be canceled entirely.
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