The
Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark
Art Deco skyscraper in New York City
at the intersection of Fifth
Avenue
and West 34th
Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of
New
York
. It stood as the world's
tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion
in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center
's North Tower was completed in 1972.
Following
the destruction of the World Trade
Center in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the
tallest building in New York City and New York State.
The Empire State Building has been named by the
American Society of Civil
Engineers as one of the
Seven Wonders of the Modern
World. The building and its street floor interior are
designated landmarks of the
New York City
Landmarks Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the
New York City Board of
Estimate. It was designated as a
National Historic Landmark in
1986. In 2007, it was ranked number one on the
List
of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.The
building is owned and managed by W&H Properties.
The Empire
State Building is the third tallest skyscraper in the Americas (after two Chicago
towers the
Willis
Tower
and Trump International Hotel and
Tower
) and the 15th tallest in the world. It is
also the 4th
tallest
freestanding structure in the Americas. The Empire State
building is currently undergoing a $120 million renovation in an
effort to transform the building into a more energy efficient and
eco-friendly structure.
History
The site of the Empire State Building was first developed as the
John Thomson Farm in the late 18th century. At the time, a stream
ran across the site, emptying into Sunfish Pond, located a block
away.
Beginning in the late 19th century the block
was occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
, frequented by The Four
Hundred, the social elite of New York.
Design and construction
The Empire State Building was designed by
William F. Lamb from
the architectural firm Shreve,
Lamb and Harmon, which produced the building drawings in just
two weeks, using its earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina
, and the Carew Tower
in Cincinnati, Ohio
(designed by the architectural firm W.W. Ahlschlager & Associates) as a
basis. Every year the staff of the Empire State Building sends a
Father's Day card to the staff at the Reynolds Building in
Winston-Salem to pay homage to its role as predecessor to the
Empire State Building. The building was designed from the top down.
The general contractors were The Starrett Brothers and Eken, and
the project was financed primarily by
John J. Raskob
and
Pierre S. du Pont. The
construction company was chaired by
Alfred E. Smith, a former
Governor of New York and
James Farley's General Builders Supply
Corporation supplied the building materials.
Excavation of the site began on January 22, 1930, and construction
on the building itself started symbolically on March
17—St.Patrick's Day—per Al Smith's influence as Empire State, Inc.
president.
The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly
immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk iron workers, many from the Kahnawake
reserve near Montreal
. According to official accounts, five
workers died during the construction. Governor Smith's
grandchildren cut the ribbon on May 1, 1931. Lewis Wickes Hine's
photography of the construction provides not only invaluable
documentation of the construction, but also a glimpse into common
day life of workers in that era. In particular the photo of a
worker climbing a stay cable is talismanic of the era and the
building itself.
The construction was part of an intense competition in New York for
the title of "
world's tallest
building".
Two other projects fighting for the title,
40 Wall
Street
and the Chrysler Building
, were still under construction when work began on
the Empire State Building. Each held the title for less than
a year, as the Empire State Building surpassed them upon its
completion, just 410 days after construction commenced.
The
building was officially opened on May 1, 1931 in dramatic fashion,
when United States President
Herbert Hoover turned on the
building's lights with the push of a button from Washington,
D.C.
Ironically, the first use of tower lights
atop the Empire State Building, the following year, was for the
purpose of signalling the victory of
Franklin D. Roosevelt over Hoover in the
presidential election of November 1932.
Opening
The
building's opening coincided with the Great Depression in the United States
, and as a result much of its office space went
without being rented. The building's vacancy was exacerbated by
its poor location on 34th Street, which placed it relatively far
from public transportation, as Grand Central Terminal
, the Port Authority Bus Terminal
, and Penn Station are
all several blocks away. Other more successful skyscrapers, such as
the Chrysler
Building, do not have this problem. In its first year
of operation, the observation deck took in approximately 2 million
dollars, as much money as its owners made in rent that year. The
lack of renters led New Yorkers to deride the building as the
"Empty State Building". The building would not become profitable
until 1950. The famous 1951 sale of The Empire State Building to
Roger L. Stevens and his business partners was brokered by the
prominent upper Manhattan real-estate firm Charles F. Noyes &
Company for a record $51 million. At the time, that was the highest
price ever paid for a single structure in real-estate
history.
Dirigible (airship) terminal
The building's distinctive
Art Deco spire
was originally designed to be a mooring mast and depot for
dirigibles. The 102nd floor was originally a landing
platform with a dirigible gangplank. A particular elevator,
traveling between the 86th and 102nd floors, was supposed to
transport passengers after they checked in at the observation deck
on the 86th floor. However, the idea proved to be impractical and
dangerous after a few attempts with airships, due to the powerful
updrafts caused by the size of the building itself. A large
broadcast tower was added to the top of the spire in 1953.
1945 plane crash
At 9:40 a.m.on Saturday, July 28, 1945, a
B-25 Mitchell bomber, piloted in thick fog by
Lieutenant Colonel William
Franklin Smith, Jr., crashed into the north side of the Empire
State Building, between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices
of the
National
Catholic Welfare Council were located. One engine shot through
the side opposite the impact and flew as far as the next block
where it landed on the roof of a nearby building, starting a fire
that destroyed a penthouse. The other engine and part of the
landing gear plummeted down an elevator shaft. The resulting fire
was extinguished in 40 minutes. 14 people were killed in the
incident. Elevator operator
Betty Lou
Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator,
which still stands as the
Guinness World Record for the longest
survived elevator fall recorded. Despite the damage and loss of
life, the building was open for business on many floors on the
following Monday. The crash helped spur the passage of the
long-pending
Federal Tort Claims
Act of 1946, as well as the insertion of retroactive provisions
into the law, allowing people to sue the government for the
accident.
A year later, another aircraft had a close encounter with the
skyscraper. It narrowly missed striking the building.
Height records and comparisons
The Empire State Building remained the
tallest
man-made structure in the world for 23 years before it was
surpassed by the
Griffin Television Tower
Oklahoma (KWTV Mast) in 1954.
It was also the tallest
free-standing structure in the world for 36 years before it was
surpassed by the Ostankino
Tower
in 1967.
The
longest world record held by the Empire State Building was for the
tallest skyscraper (to structural height), which it held for 42
years until it was surpassed by the North Tower of the World Trade
Center in 1973. With the destruction of the World Trade
Center in the September 11,
2001 attacks, the Empire State Building again became the
tallest
building in New York City, and the second-tallest building
in the Americas, currently surpassed only by the Willis Tower in Chicago. When measured by pinnacle height, the
Empire State Building is currently the fifth tallest
freestanding structure in the Americas, surpassed only by the
CN
Tower
, the Willis
Tower, Trump International Hotel and
Tower and the John Hancock Center
.
1 World
Trade Center
, currently under construction in New York City, is
expected to exceed the height of the Empire State Building upon
completion. The Chicago Spire
is also expected to exceed the height of the Empire
State Building upon completion, but its construction has been
halted due to financial problems.
Suicides
Over the years, more than thirty people have committed
suicide from the top of the building. The first
suicide occurred even before its completion, by a worker who had
been laid off. The fence around the observatory terrace was put up
in 1947 after five people tried to jump during a three-week span.
On December 2, 1979, Elvita Adams jumped from the 86th floor, only
to be blown back onto the 85th floor and left with only a broken
hip.
Shootings
On February 24, 1997, a
Palestinian gunman shot seven people on
the observation deck, killing one, then fatally wounding
himself.
Architecture
Street level view of the Empire State
Building
The Empire State Building rises to at the 102nd floor, and
including the pinnacle, its full height reaches (443.09 m).
The building has 85 stories of commercial and office space
representing . It has an indoor and outdoor observation deck on the
86th floor. The remaining 16 stories represent the Art Deco tower,
which is capped by a 102nd-floor observatory. Atop the tower is the
pinnacle, much of which is covered by broadcast antennas, with a
lightning rod at the very top.
The Empire State Building was the first building to have more than
100 floors. It has 6,500
windows and 73
elevators, and there are 1,860 steps from
street level to the 103rd floor. It has a total floor area of ; the
base of the Empire State Building is about . The building houses
1,000 businesses, and has its own zip code, 10118.
As of 2007,
approximately 21,000 employees work in the building each day,
making the Empire State Building the second-largest single office
complex in America, after the Pentagon
. The building was completed in one year and
45 days. Its original 64 elevators are located in a central core;
today, the Empire State Building has 73 elevators in all, including
service elevators. It takes less than one minute by elevator to get
to the 86th floor, where an observation deck is located. The
building has of pipe, of electrical wire, and about 9,000 faucets.
It is heated by low-pressure steam; despite its height, the
building only requires between of steam pressure for heating. It
weighs approximately . The exterior of the building was built using
Indiana limestone panels.
The Empire State Building cost $40,948,900 to build.
Unlike most of today's skyscrapers, the Empire State Building
features an art deco design, typical of pre-World War II
architecture in New York. The modernistic stainless steel canopies
of the entrances on 33rd and 34th Streets lead to two story-high
corridors around the elevator core, crossed by stainless steel and
glass-enclosed bridges at the second-floor level. The elevator core
contains 67 elevators.
The lobby is three stories high and features an aluminum relief of
the skyscraper without the antenna, which was not added to the
spire until 1952. The north corridor contains eight illuminated
panels, created by Roy Sparkia and Renée Nemorov in 1963, depicting
the building as the
Eighth
Wonder of the World, alongside the traditional seven.
Long-term forecasting of the life cycle of the structure was
implemented at the design phase to ensure that the building's
future intended uses were not restricted by the requirements of
previous generations. This is particularly evident in the
over-design of the building's electrical system.
Floodlights
In 1964, floodlights were added to illuminate the top of the
building at night, in colors chosen to match seasonal and other
events, such as
St. Patrick's Day,
Christmas,
Independance Day or
Bastille Day. After the eightieth birthday and
subsequent death of
Frank Sinatra, for
example, the building was bathed in blue light to represent the
singer's nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes". After the death of actress
Fay Wray (
King Kong) in late 2004, the
building stood in complete darkness for 15 minutes.
The
floodlights bathed the building in red, white, and blue for several
months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, then reverted to the standard schedule. Traditionally, in
addition to the standard schedule, the building will be lit in the
colors of New York's sports teams on the nights they have home
games (orange, blue and white for the
New York Knicks, red, white and blue for the
New York Rangers, and so on). The
first weekend in June finds the building bathed in green light for
the
Belmont Stakes held in nearby
Belmont Park.
The building is illuminated in tennis-ball
yellow during the US Open
tennis tournament in late August and early
September. It was twice lit in scarlet to support
nearby Rutgers
University
: once for a football game against the University
of Louisville
on November 9, 2006 , and again on April 3, 2007
when the women's basketball team played in the national
championship game.
In 1995, the building was lit up in blue, red, green and yellow for
the release of
Microsoft's
Windows 95 operating system, which was launched
with a $300 million campaign.
The
building has also been known to be illuminated in purple and white
in honor of graduating students from New York University
.
The building was lit green for three days in honor of the Islamic
holiday of
Eid ul-Fitr in October 2007.
The lighting, the first for a Muslim holiday, is intended to be an
annual event and was repeated in 2008 and 2009. In December 2007,
the building was lit yellow to signify the home video release of
The Simpsons Movie.
From April 25—27, 2008 the building was lit in lavender, pink, and
white in celebration of international pop diva
Mariah Carey's accomplishments in the world of
music and the release of her eleventh studio album E=MC2.
In late October 2008, the building was lit green in honor of the
fifth anniversary of the acclaimed Broadway Musical
Wicked by
Kerry
Ellis and
Stephen
Schwartz.
Starting in 2008, the building along with New York City and many
other cities around the world, participated in
Earth Hour. The skyscraper's floodlights were
turned off for exactly an hour to conserve energy.
In
September 2009, the building was lit for one night in orange
colors, in celebration of the exploration of Manhattan Island
by Henry Hudson 400
years earlier. The Dutch prince Willem-Alexander van Oranje
and princess Maxima were present and turned on the lights from the
lobby.
In 2009,
the building was lit for one night in red and yellow, the colors of
the People's
Republic of China
, to celebrate the 60 years since its founding, amid
controversy.
Observation decks
The Empire State Building has one of the most popular outdoor
observatories in the world, having been visited by over 110 million
people. The 86th-floor observation deck offers impressive
360-degree views of the city. There is a second observation deck on
the 102nd floor that is open to the public. It was closed in 1999,
but reopened in November 2005. It is completely enclosed and much
smaller than the first one; it may be closed on high-traffic days.
Tourists may pay to visit the observation deck on the 86th floor
and an additional amount for the 102nd floor. The lines to enter
the observation decks, according to the building's website, are "as
legendary as the building itself:" there are five of them: the
sidewalk line, the lobby elevator line, the ticket purchase line,
the second elevator line, and the line to get off the elevator and
onto the observation deck. For an extra fee tourists can skip to
the front of the line.
The skyscraper’s observation deck plays host to several cinematic,
television, and literary classics including,
An Affair To
Remember,
Love Affair and
Sleepless in
Seattle. In the Latin American literary work
Empire of
Dreams by Giannina Braschi the observation deck is the site of
a pastoral revolution; shepherds take over the City of New York.
The deck was also the site of a Martian invasion on an old episode
of
I Love Lucy.
New York Skyride
The Empire State Building also has a
motion simulator attraction, located on the
2nd floor. Opened in 1994 as a complement to the observation deck,
the New York Skyride (or NY Skyride) is a simulated aerial tour
over the city. The theatrical presentation lasts approximately 25
minutes.
Since its opening, the ride has gone through two incarnations. The
original version, which ran from 1994 until around 2002, featured
James Doohan,
Star Trek's Scotty, as the airplane's pilot, who
humorously tried to keep the flight under control during a storm,
with the tour taking an unexpected route through the subway, Coney
Island, and FAO Schwartz, among other places. After
September 11th, however, the ride
was closed, and an updated version debuted in mid-2002 with actor
Kevin Bacon as the pilot.
The new version of
the narration attempted to make the attraction more educational,
and included some minor post-9/11 patriotic undertones with
retrospective footage of the World Trade Center. The new flight also goes haywire, but this
segment is much shorter than in the original.
Broadcast stations
New York City is the largest media market in the United States.
Since the
September 11, 2001
attacks, nearly all of the city's commercial broadcast stations
(both television and FM radio) have transmitted from the top of the
Empire State Building, although a few FM stations are located at
the nearby Condé Nast Building
. Most New York City AM stations broadcast
from just across the Hudson River in
New
Jersey
.
Broadcasting began at Empire on December 22, 1931, when
RCA began transmitting experimental television
broadcasts from a small antenna erected atop the spire. They leased
the 85th floor and built a laboratory there, and—in 1934—RCA was
joined by
Edwin Howard
Armstrong in a cooperative venture to test his FM system from
the Empire antenna.
When Armstrong and RCA fell out in 1935 and
his FM equipment was removed, the 85th floor became the home of
RCA's New York television operations, first as experimental station
W2XBS channel 1, which eventually became (on July 1, 1941)
commercial station WNBT, channel 1 (now WNBC-TV
channel 4). NBC's FM station (WEAF-FM, now
WQHT) began transmitting from the antenna in 1940. NBC retained
exclusive use of the top of the Empire until 1950, when the FCC
ordered the exclusive deal broken, based on consumer complaints
that a common location was necessary for the (now) seven New York
television stations to transmit from so that receiving antennas
would not have to be constantly adjusted. Construction on a giant
tower began. Other television broadcasters then joined RCA at
Empire, on the 83rd, 82nd, and 81st floors, frequently bringing
sister FM stations along for the ride. Multiple transmissions of TV
and FM began from the new tower in 1951. In 1965, a separate set of
FM antennas were constructed ringing the 103rd floor observation
area.
When the World Trade Center was being constructed, it caused serious problems
for the television stations, most of which then moved to the World
Trade Center as soon as it was completed. This made it
possible to renovate the antenna structure and the transmitter
facilities for the benefit of the FM stations remaining there,
which were soon joined by other FMs and UHF TVs moving in from
elsewhere in the metropolitan area. The destruction of the World
Trade Center necessitated a great deal of shuffling of antennas and
transmitter rooms in order to accommodate the stations moving back
uptown.
As of 2009, the Empire State Building is home to the following
stations:
- TV:
WCBS-TV
2, WNBC-TV 4, WNYW
5, WABC-TV
7, WWOR-TV
9 Secaucus
, WPIX-TV
11, WNET
13 Newark
, WNYE-TV
25, WPXN-TV
31, WXTV
41 Paterson
, WNJU
47 Linden
, and WFUT-TV
68 Newark
- FM:
WXRK 92.3, WPAT-FM 93.1
Paterson, WNYC
-FM 93.9,
WPLJ 95.5, WXNY 96.3,
WQHT-FM
97.1, WSKQ-FM 97.9, WRKS-FM 98.7, WBAI 99.5,
WHTZ
100.3 Newark, WCBS-FM 101.1,
WRXP 101.9, WWFS 102.7,
WKTU 103.5 Lake Success
, WAXQ 104.3, WWPR-FM 105.1, WQXR-FM
105.9 Newark, WLTW 106.7, and
WBLS 107.5
Empire State Building Run-Up
The Empire State Building Run-Up is a foot race from ground level
to the 86th-floor observation deck that has been held annually
since 1978. Its participants are referred to both as runners and as
climbers, and are often
tower running
enthusiasts. The race covers a vertical distance of 1,050 feet
(320 m) and takes in 1,576 steps. The record time is
9 minutes and 33 seconds, achieved by Australian
professional cyclist
Paul Crake in 2003,
at a climbing rate of 6,593 ft (2,010 m) per hour.
In popular culture
Perhaps the most famous popular culture representation of the
building is in the 1933 film
King Kong, in which the title
character, a giant ape, climbs to the top to escape his captors but
falls to his death. In 1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film,
an inflatable King Kong was placed on the actual building. In 2005,
a remake of
King Kong
was released, set in 1930s New York City, including a final
showdown between Kong and bi-planes atop a greatly detailed Empire
State Building.
(The 1976 remake of King Kong was set in a
contemporary New York City and held its climactic scene on the
towers of the World Trade
Center.)
The 1939 romantic drama film
Love Affair involves a couple
who plan to meet atop the Empire State Building, a rendezvous that
is averted by an automobile accident. The film was remade in 1957
(as
An Affair to
Remember) and in 1994 (again as
Love Affair). The 1993 film
Sleepless in Seattle,
a romantic comedy partially inspired by
An Affair to
Remember, climaxes with a scene at the Empire State
observatory.
Andy Warhol's 1964 silent film
Empire is one
continuous, eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building at night,
shot in black-and-white.
In 2004, the National Film Registry deemed its
cultural significance worthy of preservation in the Library of
Congress
.
The film
Independence
Day features the Empire State Building as
ground zero for an alien attack; it is
devastated by the aliens' primary weapon which incinerates most of
New York City.
The Empire State Building featured in the 1966
Doctor Who serial
The Chase, in which the
TARDIS lands on the roof of the building;
The Doctor and his companions leave
quite quickly, however, because
The Daleks are
close behind them. A Dalek is also seen on the roof of the building
while it interrogated a human. In 2007,
Doctor Who
episodes "
Daleks in Manhattan"
and "
Evolution of the
Daleks" also featured the building, which
the
Daleks are constructing to use as a lightning conductor.
Russell T Davies said in an article
that "in his mind", the Daleks remembered the building from their
last visit.
The Discovery Channel show
MythBusters tested the urban myth which
claims that if one drops a penny off the top of the Empire State
Building, it could kill someone or put a crater in the pavement.
The outcome was that, by the time the penny hits the ground, it is
going roughly (
terminal velocity
for an object of its mass and shape), which is not fast enough to
inflict lethal injury or put a crater into the pavement. The urban
legend is a joke in the 2003 musical
Avenue
Q, where a character waiting atop the building for a
rendezvous tosses a penny over the side—only to hit her
rival.
Many other movies that feature the Empire State Building are listed
on the building's own website.
H.G. Wells'
1933 science fiction book
The Shape of Things to
Come, written in the form of a
history book published in the far future,
includes the following passage: "Up to quite recently Lower New
York has been the most old-fashioned city in the world, unique in
its gloomy antiquity. The last of the ancient skyscrapers, the
Empire State Building, is even now under demolition in C.E.
2106!".
In the Science Fiction novel
The Rebel of Rhada by
Robert Cham Gilman (
Alfred Coppel), taking place at a decayed
galactic empire of the far future, New York is an ancient city
which was destroyed and rebuilt countless times. Its highest and
most ancient building, covered with piled-up ruins up to half its
height, is known simply as "The Empire Tower", but is obviously the
Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building is featured prominently as both a setting
and integral plot device throughout much of
Michael Chabon's 2000
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel,
The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
In the
Percy
Jackson book series, Mount Olympus is located over the Empire
State Building, and there is a special elevator in the building to
the "600th floor," which is supposed to be Olympus. A film
adaptation of the first book in this series
The Lightning Thief is set to be
released in 2010 and the building will be serve as one of the
stars.
In the 2003 Christmas comedy film
ELF,
starring
Will Ferrell, Buddy the elf's
father, Walter, works as a children's book publisher whose office
is located in the Empire State Building. In a memorable scene,
Buddy gets in one of the building's elevators, and is excited by
all of the floor buttons. He lights up all of the buttons, saying
that it 'looks like a Christmas tree.'
In the 2009 science fiction film,
Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen, Megatron hacks into the Empire State Building's
antenna and uses it along with a hacked US Military satellite so
that his master, the Fallen, can broadcast an ultimatum to the
world.
Tenants
Notable tenants of the building include:
Former tenants include:
Gallery
Image:Empire State Building background.jpg|A
view upward of the Empire State Building from Broadway
Image:Empire State Building Red and
Green.JPG|The top of the Empire State BuildingImage:Empire State
Building up.jpg|Looking upImage:Looking down from Empire State
Building.jpg|Looking DownImage:ESB Elevators.JPG|Art deco elevators
in the lobbyImage:Midtown_Pan1_PS.JPG|Panoramic view of Midtown
Manhattan from observation
deckImage:EmpireStateBuildingtotimessquare.JPG|Looking towards
Times SquareImage:Empire State Building 30 Sep 2009.jpg|The Empire
State Building lights up in yellow and red during the
60th anniversary of the PRC
See also
References
Further reading
- Aaseng, Nathan. (1999). Construction: Building the
Impossible. Minneapolis, MN: Oliver Press. ISBN
1-881-50859-5.
- Bascomb, Neal. (2003). Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky
and the Making of a City. New York: Doubleday. ISBN
0-385-50660-0.
- Goldman, Jonathan. (1980). The Empire State Building
Book. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-24455-X.
- James, Theodore, Jr. (1975). The Empire State
Building. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-060-12172-6.
- Kingwell, Mark. (2006). Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire
State Building and American Dreams. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press. ISBN 0-300-10622-X.
- Macaulay, David. (1980). Unbuilding. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-29457-6.
- Pacelle, Mitchell. (2001). Empire: A Tale of Obsession,
Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon. New York:
Wiley. ISBN 0-471-40394-6.
- Tauranac, John. (1995). The Empire State Building: The
Making of a Landmark. New York: Scribner. ISBN
0-684-19678-6.
- Wagner, Geraldine B. (2003). Thirteen Months to Go: The
Creation of the Empire State Building. San Diego, CA: Thunder
Bay Press. ISBN 1-592-23105-5.
- Willis, Carol (ed). (1998). Building the Empire State.
New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-73030-1.
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