Empire State Building (New York, USA)
Empire State Building
Empire State Building is a 102-floor skyscraper, located on Manhattan Island, New York City. Since 1931 and until 1972, when the North Tower of the World Trade Center was opened, it was the tallest construction in the world. In 2001, when the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, the skyscraper once again became the tallest building in New York. The Architecture of the building is conceived to be in Art Deco style.
In 1986, the Empire State Building was added to the list of National Historic Landmarks of USA. In 2007, according to the version of American Institute of Architects, the construction was included under #1 on the List of America’s Favourite Architecture. The owner and managing company of the building is W&H Properties. The tower is located on the Fifth Avenue, between 33rd and 34th West Streets.
The Empire State Building at the present moment is the third tallest skyscraper in the United States, after the Willis Tower and Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, and the 15-th tallest in the world. The building is under a $550 million reconstruction at the present moment, $120 million of which are spent to renovate the building into an environment-friendly structure with less power consumption.
The tower received its name from the nickname for New York, which is dubbed “The Empire State.” The name of the tower can be also translated as “The House of Empire’s State.” Its design was done by an architectural company “Shreve, Lamb and Harmon,” and it was built on the money of John Rockefeller, Jr.
Ground work was started at the site on January 22 of 1930, and the construction of the tower itself started on March 17 – on St. Patrick’s Day. 3,400 workers were involved in the construction, mostly immigrants from Europe, as well as a few hundred iron workers from Mohawk tribe, many of whom came to the construction site from the Kahnawake reservation, close to Montreal. According to the official statistics, five lethal cases were registered among the workers during the construction.
Governor Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon at the opening of the building on May 1 of 1931. Shots of photographer Lewis Wickes Hine are not only important historic sources, portraying different stages of the construction, but they also show the life and labour conditions of workers of that time.
The construction of the building became part of a competition for a record-breaking height, which was going on in New York at that time. Two other projects participating in that race, – Wall Street, 40 and Chrysler Building – were at the stage of construction when the Empire State Building started being built. Every rival project held the title of the tallest building for few months before the Empire State Building topped them all. The construction took only 410 days. Four and a half floors were being built in one week, while at the most intensive phase 14 floors were raised within 10 days. The official opening ceremony was held on May 1 of 1931 when President of the United States Herbert Hoover turned on the building’s lights by pushing a button from Washington. The next year, the top lights of the building were used for the first time to celebrate Roosevelt’s victory over Hoover in the presidential campaign of November 1932.
When the grand opening of the Empire State Building took place on May 1 of 1931, the United States were experiencing the great depression. Therefore, not all the facilities could be rented out and the building was dubbed the “Empty State Building.” Ten years passed, until, eventually, all the facilities were rented. The building did not bring any profit to its owners until 1950. Only in 1951, after it was sold to Roger Stevens and his partners for $51 million (a record-breaking price paid for a single building in those times), the building was no longer loss-making.
In the beginning of the building’s usage, its spire was supposed to serve as a mooring mast 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 of an air terminal proved to be impractical and dangerous (due to the powerful and unstable updrafts that made the process of mooring very complicated, and after the first attempt it became clear that this idea is utopic). No zeppelin ever moored at this building. Some broadcasting equipment replaced the terminal in 1952. Eventually, the original idea was realized in a movie “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.”
On July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber, piloted in thick fog by Lieutenant Colonel William Smith, crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building, between the 79th and 80th floors. 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; the other engine 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. Despite the incident, the building was not closed and businesses in many offices still operated on the following working day.
Over the years, more than thirty suicides have been committed here. The first suicide occurred right after the construction was completed, 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. In 1979, Miss Elvita Adams decided to take her own life and jumped from the 86th floor. But a strong gust of wind blew her back onto the 85th floor and left her with only a broken hip. One of the last suicides took place on April 13 of 2007, when a lawyer, who was unsuccessful in his professional career, jumped from the 69th floor.
The building is 443.2 meters high to the tip of the spire and 381 meters – to the roof. It was the tallest building in the world for 41 years and for 23 years – the tallest man-made structure in the world. In 1972, the North Tower of the World Trade Center surpassed the Empire State Building in height and became the tallest building in the world. With the destruction of the World Trade Towers in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, the Empire State Building again became the tallest building in New York City, and the second-tallest building in the United States, surpassed only by the Willis Tower in Chicago.