7 Modern Wonders
of the World
The Empire State Building
is a 102-story 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 second tallest skyscraper in
the Americas (surpassed only by Chicago's
Willis Tower) and the 11th tallest
in the world. It is also the 4th tallest
freestanding structure in the Americas.
History
The present 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. The block
was occupied by the Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel in the late 19th century, and
was frequented by The Four Hundred,
the social elite of New York.
Design and construction
The Empire State Building was designed
by Gregory Johnson and his 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,
as a basis. The building was actually
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.
A worker bolts beams during construction;
the Chrysler Building can be seen
in the background.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 the 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 unrented. 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 103rd 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
Crash by a U.S. Army B-25 bomber on
July 28, 1945At 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.
Architecture
Empire State Building
Street level view of the Empire State
BuildingThe Empire State Building
rises to 1,250 ft (381 m) at the 103rd
floor, and including the 203 ft (62
m) pinnacle, its full height reaches
1,453 ft–89/16 in (443.09 m).
The building has 85 stories of commercial
and office space representing 2,158,000
sq ft (200,500 m2). 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 102rd-floor observatory.
Atop the tower is the 203 ft (62 m)
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
2,768,591 sq ft (257,211 m2); the
base of the Empire State Building
is about 2 acres (8,094 m2). 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 70 mi
(113 km) of pipe, 2,500,000 ft (760,000
m) of electrical wire,[31] and about
9,000 faucets.[citation needed] It
is heated by low-pressure steam; despite
its height, the building only requires
between 2 and 3 psi (14 and 21 kPa)
of steam pressure for heating. It
weighs approximately 370,000 short
tons (340,000 t). The exterior of
the building was built using Indiana
limestone panels.
The Empire State Building
cost $40,948,900 to build.
A series of setbacks causes the building
to taper with height.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.[2]
Archive footage from
the building of Empire State Building.
