Empire State Building
The
Empire State Building is a 102-story contemporary
Art Deco style building in
New York City, declared by the
American Society of Civil Engineers to be one of the
Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Designed by
Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, it was finished in
1931. The tower takes its name from the
nickname of
New York State. Since the
September 11th attacks, it is again the tallest building in New York City.
The building belongs to the
World Federation of Great Towers.
Unlike most of today's high-rise buildings, the Empire State has a classic masonry facade. The building's distinctive art deco
spire was originally designed to be a mooring mast and depot for
zeppelins. However, after a couple of test attempts with
airships, the idea proved to be impractical and dangerous due to the powerful updrafts caused by the size of the building itself, though the T-shaped mooring devices remain in place.
Although the lower floors occupy the entire block, there are various "setbacks" in the building's design, as required by the New York City zoning law of 1916 (aimed at reducing shadows cast by tall buildings). These setbacks give the building its unique tapered silhouette.
 |
Entrance lobby. |
The lobby is three stories high and contains an aluminum relief of the skyscraper (lacking the later added antenna). 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.
A public outdoor observatory at the 86th floor offers impressive 360-degree views of the city (the first of its kind), and is a popular tourist destination.
The tower rises to 1,250
feet (
381 m) at the 102nd floor, and its full structural height (including broadcast antenna) reaches 1,472
feet (
448 m). It was the first building to have more than 100 floors.
It remained the tallest skyscraper in the world for a record 41 years (and the world's tallest man-made structure for 23 years) until the construction of the
World Trade Center, and shortly afterwards the
Sears Tower. Following the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, the Empire State Building regained the title of tallest building in
New York City, and the 2nd tallest building in the
United States (see the
50 Tallest buildings in the U.S. list).
The building weighs approximately 330,000
metric tonnes. The building has 6,500 windows, 73
elevators and 1,860 steps to the top floor. Total floor area: 2,200,000 square feet (200,000 m²)
The Empire State Building is located at 350
Fifth Avenue,
ZIP Code 10118, between 33rd and
34th Streets, in
Midtown Manhattan, at approximately
[http://www.globalguide.org?long=-73.986389&lat=40.748611&zoom=3&name=Empire_State_Building ]. It is directly across from
Weehawken Cove, on the other side of the
Hudson River.
On
May 1,
2006, The Empire State Building celebrated its 75th birthday.
The site was first developed as the John Thomson Farm, in the late 18th century. The building stands on a block once occupied by the original
Waldorf Hotel, a place frequented by
The Four Hundred, the social elite of New York, in the late 19th century.
 |
Worker bolting beams during construction. |
Excavation of the site for the Empire State Building began on
January 22,
1930, and construction on the building itself started on
March 17. The project involved 3400 workers, mostly European immigrants, along with hundreds of
Mohawk nation iron workers; 14 of the workers died during construction
[http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/29/empire.state.ap/index.html].
The project was hurried to completion in order to take the title of "world's tallest building" from the nearby
Chrysler Building. The Empire State Building was officially opened on
May 1,
1931, when President
Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C. that turned on the building's lights, 410 days after construction commenced.
From its opening until the
1940s much of its office space went unrented. This lack of inhabitants earned it the nickname "Empty State Building" in its early years.
At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday
July 28,
1945, a
B-25 Mitchell bomber accidentally crashed in a thick fog into the north side between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the
National Catholic Welfare Council were located. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. 14 people were killed in the accident
[http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/News/News8-0112.html].
Following the accident, elevator operator
Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator, and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall recorded
[http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=53746].
The large broadcasting antenna rising from the top of the spire was added in
1952.
Floodlights illuminate the top of the building at night, in colors chosen to match seasonal and other events, such as
Christmas and
Hanukkah. After the 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 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
[http://www.esbnyc.com/tourism/tourism_lightingschedule.cfm?CFID=15475194&CFTOKEN=55096369 ]. 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 building is illuminated in tennis ball yellow during the
U.S. Open.
New York City is the largest media market in the United States, and since
September 11, 2001, nearly all of New York's commercial broadcast stations (both television and radio) have transmitted from the top of Empire. A few stations are located at the nearby
Condé Nast Building, however.
Broadcasting began at Empire in the late 1930s, when
RCA leased the 85th floor and built a laboratory there for
Edwin Howard Armstrong. When Armstrong and RCA fell out, the 85th floor became the home of RCA's New York television operations, first as an experimental station and eventually as a commercial station WNBT, channel 4 (now
WNBC-TV). Other television broadcasters would join RCA at Empire, on the 83rd, 82nd, and 81st floors, frequently bringing sister FM stations along for the ride. When the
World Trade Center was being constructed, it caused serious problems for the television stations, most of which 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.
On
April 27,
2006, daredevil
Jeb Corliss, who was one of the
stuntmen on the
Discovery Channel series
Stunt Junkies, was arrested after attempting to parachute off of the 86th floor observation balcony. He had passed internal security disguising as an old person with a fat suit, and was getting ready to make his jump wearing a parachute and video equipment when
Port Authority security intercepted him trying to scale up the iron suicide fence and arrested him. He faces several felony charges, including endangerment of his own life and others around. Subsequently
Discovery Networks denied it had given Corliss any permission to attempt the stunt, noting they require their production companies to obtain permits and permissions from local authorities before any filming. The network then fired him from
Stunt Junkies and gave him a lifetime ban from appearing on any other Discovery Networks project
[http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6329593.html?title=Article&spacedesc=news] [http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/stuntjunkies/stuntjunkies.html].
|
Communications devices of all sorts adorn the very top of the building. |
Communications arrays
As of 2005, Empire 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,
WXTV 41
Paterson,
WNJU 47
Linden, and
WFUT-TV 68 Newark
* FM:
WFNY-FM 92.3,
WPAT-FM 93.1 Paterson,
WNYC-FM 93.9,
WPLJ 95.5,
WQXR-FM 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,
WQCD 101.9,
WNEW-FM 102.7,
WKTU 103.5
Lake Success,
WAXQ 104.3,
WWPR-FM 105.1,
WCAA 105.9 Newark,
WLTW 106.7, and
WBLS 107.5.
 |
Comparison with other notable skyscrapers. |
The
Torre Latinoamericana in Mexico City looks very similar to the Empire State Building. Also of similar design are the
Seven Sisters in Moscow, such as the
Moscow State University building and the
Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland. The
Williams Tower in Houston is a glass-architecture version of the design, and the entrance on the ground floor is very similar.
The Reynolds Building, headquarters for the
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in
Winston-Salem,
North Carolina is the oldest skyscraper in the southeastern United States, and said to be the prototype for the Empire State Building. The
Carew Tower in
Cincinnati, is also thought to be the basis of the tower, due to its similar design also by
Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates.
*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, and eventually falls off and dies. In
1983, for the 50th anniversary of the film, an inflatable King Kong was placed on the real Empire State Building. However, a mouse chewed through it one day, partially deflating the ape. He also needed a constant supply of air, and was never fully inflated.
*In
James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl's much-loved children's story, orphan James Henry Trotter's flying peach finally docks in New York by setting down on the Empire State Building's spire. Published in
1961, the story was made into an Oscar-nominated
Tim Burton film in
1996.
*In the video game
Super Monkey Ball 2, the ESB can be seen in the background of World 4 (Inside The Whale).
* In the season 2 (
1988) episode
The Incredible Shrinking Turtles of the
1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon,
Shredder uses an alien crystal, which fell down as an alien spaceship crashed on the
Earth, to shrink down the Empire State Building into the size of a
dollhouse. The people inside it are not affected by the shrinking, and have to escape to avoid being crushed as the building shrinks down.
* In 2005, a new version of
King Kong was released, set in a re-creation of 1930's New York City, including a final showdown between Kong and the bi-planes atop a greatly detailed Empire State Building. (The retro-dating of this remake stands in contrast to the
1976 remake of
King Kong, which was set in then-modern times and held its climactic scene on both towers of the (now-destroyed) World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building.)
*The observation deck was the designated site for romantic rendezvous in the films
Love Affair,
An Affair to Remember, and
Sleepless In Seattle. It was also the location of a phony
Martian invasion in an episode of
I Love Lucy.
*The film
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow opens with a zeppelin docking at the building's mooring mast. Additionally, the building can be seen with King Kong scaling it in the background of one of the shots.
*"Terror in New York City", an episode of the
Supermarionation series
Thunderbirds involves an attempt in 2026 to move the Empire State Building to a new location on tracks to allow for the redevelopment of midtown Manhattan. Ground subsidence beneath the tracks results in the building's collapse.
*In the 300th issue of
Superman magazine, the Empire State building is refurbished during the early
1980s to reclaim the title of world's tallest building; rising 1000 stories.
*In the movie
Independence Day, the building is
ground zero when an alien spaceship destroys New York City. This depiction was a homage to a similar SF invasion movie scene described in the
science fiction short story
"Publicity Campaign" by
Arthur C. Clarke. .
*
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.
*In
The Chase, a 1965 serial from the
William Hartnell-era of
Doctor Who, the
Doctor,
Barbara Wright,
Ian Chesterton and
Vicki, fleeing through time and space with a group of
Daleks in hot pursuit, arrive in their
TARDIS time machine on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building (thus avoiding the long lines). They leave shortly after arriving and shortly before the pursuing Daleks' time machine materializes. The Daleks, ignoring the view, also leave almost immediately.
*The building has a cameo role in the
1946 cartoon Baseball Bugs. Fitting the cartoon's theme, the skyscraper is labeled the "
Umpire State Building".
*In
Godzilla: Final Wars. the
pterosaur Rodan flies over the Empire State Building then perches atop a nearby skyscraper with The Empire State Building in the background, then and howls at the moon before continuing his rampage on New York City eventually destroying the
Statue of Liberty.
* In
Unbuilding, by
David Macaulay, the building is bought and disassembled, to be reassembled halfway across the world as a corporate headquarters.
* In the
2003 Christmas-themed film
Elf,
Will Ferrell's father, played by
James Caan, works in a publishing company in the building.
* In
Star Trek: Enterprise, "
Storm Front", a two-part season 4 episode, had an alternate timeline where the eastern side of the
United States is being conquered by the Germans, with the aid of aliens. The opening teaser of part 2, shows a propaganda news reel which shows footage of
Adolf Hitler visiting
New York, and the Empire State Building.
* In
Futurama the setting takes place in the year 3000 in New New York City. Old New York is now underground and in ruins. The Empire State Building is never seen in the underground ruins, but it is seen on the Surface land of New New York. This implies that either the building was rebuilt or was simply taken from the ruins and was restored. The longest time the building was shown was in the episode "Anthology of Interest I", huge
Bender falls on the Empire State Building which pierces through the robot while his two arms destroy two fantasy neighboring buildings, the Empire State Building Comes out undamaged. He says before dying: "Oooh... who put this in here?"
* In the video game
Spider-Man 2, player can explore, wing from and climb the Manhattan skyscrapers, including the ESB. The Empire State Building in the game is the tallest structure you can find.
* The pulp hero
Doc Savage had his headquarters on the 86th floor of a 'New York City skyscraper.' It was repeatedly implied that this was the Empire State Building, though in real life, the 86th floor is the observation deck.
* In the animated series
Transformers, the Empire State Building is stolen by the Decepticons and modified to resemble a building similar on the Transformers homeworld as part of Megatron's plan in
City of Steel. It is eventually restored back to its former self at the end of the episode.
* In the
2002 movie
The Time Machine Alexander Hartdegen a scientist and time traveler uses his time machine and travels to the year
2030.Upon arrival to the futuristic
New York you could see many noticeable structures like the New York Public Library and the
Empire State Building.
* In the
2004 movie "
The Day After Tomorrow" New York was going through a series of devastating storms including heavy rain, snow storms, and a
storm surge. When the city encountered a deep freeze many buildings including the
Empire State Building were turning pale white as the cold settled to the ground shattering windows as it descended.
* The building can be built as a landmark in both
Sim City 4 and
Sim City 3000.
360° Panorama, Manhattan, Empire State Building (to view, move the slidebar at the bottom of the picture with your mouse) |
360° Panorama of New York City from Empire State Building in spring 2005. |
|
Panorama of New York City, with Empire State Building at left center, December 2005. |
Image:Looking_Up_at_Empire_State_Building.JPG|Looking up at the Empire State Building.Image:Empire_State_Building_Night.jpg|The Empire State Building at night.Image:Empirestate1.jpg|The Empire State Building from a distance.The Empire State Building Book, by Jonathan Goldman, St. Martin's Press, 1980.
Unbuilding, by David Macaulay, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
The Empire State Building - The making of a landmark, by John Tauranac, Scribner, 1995.
Construction: Building the Impossible, by Nathan Aaseng, The Oliver Press, Inc., 2000.
*
World's tallest free standing structure on land*
History of tallest skyscrapers*
Official website, with
history and a
lighting schedule*
The Construction of the Empire State Building, 1930-1931,
New York Public Library
